[T3] Fuel Gauge Grounding Solution

[Jim Adney]

On 26 Jan 2023 at 16:50, William Jahn wrote:

>  My 73 already has a ground wire on one of the tabs on the back of black
> plastic plug. It has a 1/4 female spade connector on it, forget which one
> but it's a ground just for the fuel gauge. I noticed a few times that if I
> turn on the 4 ways the gauge needle moves , I just reach up and pull it
> off the tree on the left of steering wheel and see if it's tight and clean
> , if clean , work it a few times and it clears the problem .

Hmmm, guess I'll have to look into this a bit deeper.

Okay, I just looked thru my stash of instrument panel bits and came up with 2 
different styles of bulb holder. The early one has just a rivet holding that 
brass ground connector sleeve in the holder; the late one has a 1/4" tab on 
the outside, held on by that same rivet. That tab is marked 31 (ground.) 

There's no date on these parts, so I can't tell when VW started this, but 
probably in '69. The parts book shows the latest part for all years, so it 
superceeded the early bulb base.

I'll have to check my cars to see if its connected, and to what.

The mod I suggested might still be useful for early cars, but for later, 
probably '69-on, it looks like VW already took care of this, but it has 
connection problems.

Looks like I dived down this rabbit hole too quickly.

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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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