1985-1998 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
The speedometer should be a relatively easy fix. Mine has some bounce to it, but only on slow acceleration from say, 5 mph to 25 mph, then it's smooth (and never when coasting). Apparently what happens, is that the little gear that runs a sensor (the speedo cable itself is a wire - as in electrical, not a mechanically turning cable) on top of the tranmissiong (you will see it towards the back) somehow looses its lubrication, or all the grease goes to one side of the thing, thus the erratic readings. I've never heard of such a wide jump, but it does seem to be a fairly common problem. I haven't gone to the trouble of trying to fix mine yet, but even if you have another shop do it, I'd expect it to take no more than an hour (maybe half) of labor, and only that because it's the minimum they will charge.. I can't say 100% this is your problem, and I do also recall hearing of a change in the speedo mechanical from '86 to '87, but I'm not sure if that is related to your problem.
As to the high beams switch, you're correct. There is a little soft white plastic cam inside the switch, that starts out life as a square cam. It's purpose is to latch the high beams on when you pull the stalk all the way back. Due to some lack of foresight, the '86 and '87 9000s feature an electrical design which runs the full headlight current through the switch itself. This causes quite a bit of heating up inside the switch, and if you don't take care to clean the contacts where the harness plugs into the switch, some heavy oxidation could result and heat the sucker up even more. In my car, the switch got so hot (or at least, the connector to it), that it put a crack and melted a hole in the plastic steering column cover. Also started to smoke a little, and many was the night I'd be greeted by a slight burning smell. Fortunately, there was no damage done except to the switch itself.
If your switch is currently undamaged except for the high beams not working (does flash still work, ie high beams before it clicks?), you may be able to repair it by rebuilding the formerly square little cam with some epoxy, filing it off to make it square again. And epoxy would be much harder than the existing plastic. Of course the best solution is to rewire the headlights with an aftermarket (or self designed) light harness, which will take power directly off the battery and add a couple more relays. Therefore, your high beam combo switch would simply trigger the additional relays, and have minimal current flowing through it, which will prolong it's life. I still think that little cam could get rounded off even without extra heat though, if you use the high beams a lot, but depending on mileage, could last a lot longer. Seems most go out in the 100k-120k mileage range.
One solution is to just buy a whole other switch, but it's a dealer only item, and runs $200-$250 !!! OUCH!! All for a little plastic part that costs probably $0.01 to manufacture! Or, you could do like I did and find a good used combo switch, I paid $75 for mine. Hopefully it will last a while longer with the low current..
whew! Sorry to be so long... Whatever route you take, make SURE that while you have the switch out, you clean all the contacts till they shine like a new penny! Sandpaper, steel wool, scouring pad, whatever, just clean them! It's easy to get out, just a few screws and you can take the covers of the steering column, a couple more bolts and unplug three harness connectors, and the switch is out.
Might want to clean the connectors on the wiper switch while you're in there...
Cheers,
Aaron Gilbert
1987 9000T 249k miles
, Tue, 2 Jan 2001 21:57:12
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