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Old 14th December 2021, 15:22
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Jaguartvr Jaguartvr is offline
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I have just got the instruments back from Grassbank, they were returned to have the loom extended as it was impossible to fit them with the supplied loom.
I was advised that they could be fitted under the dash. I have unravelled the loom around the 3 BMW dash plugs so that they now drop below the steering column. There is no way that the BMW PCB (original stripped down instrument cluster) will fit under the dash next to the steering column, there just isn't room. This is a later car that has the accelerator motor fitted here, even without it there still wouldn't be room. I have moved the white control box (not sure what it is) and the light switch but still impossible, so back to plan B. Fitting PCB above the steering column. To get it in I have had to cut down the demister vent tubing over the steering column and I have glassed it back up. Just waiting for it to dry and I will have a go at fitting again tomorrow.

The new loom is much better but the tails on the instruments are disapointing. 250mm on clock,fuel and water guages but only 60mm on the 2 oil guages, speedo and rev counter, the amount you can pull the instruments out to fit all the very fiddly bulbs is limited by the shortest leads, makes the newly lengthened leads pointless. However, all may not be lost as the loom from the PCB has all been extended so hopefully, this will give me enough room.
The illumination originally was woeful, you just couldn't read the instruments, this has been rectified by extra illumination bulbs being fitted. The PCB has a new section of loom with these additional lights on but they are hard wired with no connectors so this limits the room available to get the bulbs in, if you look a the picture you can see how many spaces there are that need to have bulbs fitted.
In future, the extra illumination bulbs need to be wired to the instrument plugs so all the bulbs can be fitted on the bench and then one or two plugs per instrument. If you are thinking of ordering a set I would ask for this and 250mm tails on all instruments. Bear in mind that this is the first set of instruments that Grassbank have sold and I am not using a Grassbank dash. If you were using the Grassbank dash I'm sure that it would be easier but I'm sure that longer tails would be better.
Update tomorrow so long as it doesn't rain.
3 good tails, 2 too short

tails too short

16 bulbs to be fitted, hard enough with long tails but with the short tails the ewear box might get a big boost tomorrow.
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