Guages Not Working 1996 Passat TDI

Joined
Apr 5, 2010
Location
Wisconsin
TDI
96' Passat TDI Wagon, 93' Mercedes 300D Turbo Diesel, 7.3L Excursion
Guages Not Working 1996 Passat TDI...

I checked the fuse and checked to see that there is power to the fuse holder. Does anyone know if there are any fusable links that I am unaware of? I recently bought the car that way. The situation started with the previous owner. He changed the starter and did not disconnect the battery before starting the project. When doing so he remembered accidentally touching the loose positive wire to groung shooting sparks... When the job was done the no start problem was fixed but he noticed right away the spedometer and all the guages did not work. Then a few days later on a rainy day he noticed the wipers did not work. When I got the car I found a blown fuse for the wipers so they are working just fine now.

I would like to find a "Original" VW service manual for this project and also for in the future. From my experience I am not a big fan of the chilton manuals and the haynes manuals are better but not purfect. Put it this way... I purchased the original service manual for my truck with the Power Stroke.

Thought I would start here because I am new to the TDI forum and did not see any posts that are the same as the problem I am having.

There are lots of little glitches with my new TDI but I will start with this one

Looking forward to running it fora long time - so far looks like I can run back and forth to work all week on less than $10

Thanks
 

joetdi

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2008
Location
Midwest
TDI
2-2002 Jettas W/Auto
If you know you have power to the cluster then the problem is most likely the cluster. These were replace often back then. There was a guy on here that fixed them but, I can't find it right now.
 

TonyJetta

Top Post Dawg
Joined
Sep 15, 2005
Location
Tucson, Az
TDI
'15 Jetta TDI SE / '06 Jetta TDI DSG Pkg0 / '96 Passat TDI
1) With a Passat, you'll want to do a LOT of reading in the A3/B4 forum. There is a LOT of information specific to the Passat (B4)
2) Chris Bell is a good contact for B4 clusters.
3) Dewhite apparently has new skills in reprogramming B4 clusters.

Tony
 
Joined
Apr 5, 2010
Location
Wisconsin
TDI
96' Passat TDI Wagon, 93' Mercedes 300D Turbo Diesel, 7.3L Excursion
Thanks for the help! I have discovered another problem... I plugged my scanner into the OBD2 port and get a communication error pop up - the scanner will not communicate at all. Maybe I have more problems than the cluster.?.?.? I am not shure yet. I have used my scanner on 99 and 03 TDI jetta's and it works great with them. Maybe it does not work on the older passat? I am not shure yet. There may be something else fried besides the cluster.

If I do not find anything else wrong I will be sending my cluster to Dewhite to test/repair.
 
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