Speedo lite bulb

[u242447]

Question how tough is it to change the speedometer lite bulb on a1989 Porsche 911




2010 BMW 328i Coupe
1989 Porsche 911 Convertible
1971 VW Karmann Ghia Convertible

[dshepp806]

Not hard at all,..many threads on this. Getting that gauge out can be a pain sometimes and (once out) one needs to apply pressure to the outer area of the bulb housing (back of gauge) for extraction without damage.

Best!

Doyle

[schumicat]

pull gauge out with special tool (fingers) and use a knife to pry the bulb housing out (don't pull wire). takes about 30 seconds.

[porwolf]

Just did it recently. A little tricky to get the speedometer out of the dashboard. I used a stiff paint spatula with a couple of heavy duty paking tabe wraped arund the front edge. I used the tool to firmly but gently pry out the speedometer together with the rubber retaining ring from the dashboard. You can actually leverage the paint spatula against the bottrom edge of the dashboard. With the packing tape the tool leaves no traces.

To get the lights out is another challenge. But it is rather easy with a small jeweller screw driver if you wedge it under the metal edge of the light bulb socket and pry that one out too.

[Dublinoh]

Easier if you take out the clock first and reach in to push the speedo out. Some of these circuits are not fused....to be safe disconnect battery first. +1 don't pull on the wire to remove the bulb holder. Also not a lot of slack....don't pull to hard on the speedo when it's out. But easy to do.

[spuggy]

Speedo and tach can be quite tough if they haven't been out in 10 years or more. Get any of the gauges out and reach around and push the others out. I don't pry the gauges out, just use fingers around the bezel.

+1 on fusing the dash lights if they're not already - that's a great investment of 10 minutes...

Also consider some good LEDs - Jake's (Etarga) are excellent. Brighter, never get a coating inside and get dim like incandescent do when they get old, last for years - and LEDs don't get hot.

You'd probably be surprised how hot the bulbs in fan illumination and the festoon bulbs in the courtesy lights get...

[dshepp806]

Spuggy's points are dead-on. I went ahead and loaded Jake's LEDS and they are great! Had to remove all of my gauges to have NHS rework all of them, as part of the car's restoration. Here's one of the pics of the rear of a gauge that demonstrates that lip one needs to "get under" in order to pry the bulb assembly up and away from the gauge (remove). This is from a 1989.


BEST!

Doyle