26 June 2014

Steering cover

With the impending change to black dash, I saw the covers at GW for the insertion of the seat heater switches and bought it figuring I could obtain whatever I needed later.

Well - the seat heater switches are no longer available, and it left me with a 'what the hell do I do with this now' feeling.  

Somewhere I saw a finished product for sale wherby an industrious person was inserting a remote temperature gauge into this housing panel.  Perfect use!  Got used to having one in all my other cars, liked the idea of having one in the Thingamajigger.

So tonight I played with the Dremel and figured out how easy it is to do this little project.  Here is what I learned:


Here is the housing.  Official VW part.  The switch hole is roughly a full 1/16th too narrow, and the height is off by 1/32nd or so.

When I started Dremeling out the hole, I started by evening the steps on three sides to correspond with the lower step. That gave me roughly half of the width I needed and all the height.  Continuing to Dremel the sides finally gave me the width and a straight file cleaned up the corners.


The temperature readout piece was bought at ebay.  


The final piece looks like this:


Once installed, it will make a nicely visible readout.


The hole is too large for a standard VW switch.  I suppose there are other uses for the housing that could be just as utilitarian.  It is not really large enough for a standard gauge pod. 






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