What is needed to make an MFA work

[treed2@u.washington.edu (T. Reed)]

Brian,

I assume you mean that you want to swap an MFA into a non-MFA car..

You need the following:
- MFA instrument cluster (don't bother trying to swap circuit boards and
  mfa parts between clusters, it's not worth the effort especially between
  8v and 16v clusters since you'll have to fabricate an adapter bracket
  for the speedo face and hunt down another set of impossible to find
  miniature metric speedo screws. trust me, I've done it and even being a
  broke college bastard like myself it wasn't worth it to save $50)
- MFA/wiper steering column switch (A1-style. A2-style will work with some
  trimming)
- MFA cluster wiring harness

  -OR-

  Just two (one white, one black) spare connectors that plug in to the
  bottom of any vw cluster from the same era. You can take the wires out
  and add the necessary MFA wires to your existing harness. This is what I
  did. You also need the wires from the MFA switch 4-pin connector to the
  cluster so you can splice these to the wires from the spare connectors.

- MFA ambient air temperature sensor and the connector for it. You can
  make the wiring yourself, it's just two wires.
 -Oil temperature sender (if you want to hook it up.. I didn't bother
  since my head already had a sensor for the analog gauge in my center
  console and you can't splice the output or it won't be accurate
  anymore. I'd have to buy a hydraulic "tee" fitting with the right
  threads so I could add an extra sensor)
- Wire - 18 ga should be adequate but you'll need like 20-25 ft
- Vacuum hose to run from cluster to a tee with the underhood vacuum
  system, about 4 feet. Buy a tee too (auto parts store or hydroponics
  section at hardware store).
- 1/4" Wire looming - recommended to make your underhood wiring less ugly
- Bentley wiring diagrams to figure out how to wire up the thing
  (in my case, the mfa switch had four wires - grey/black, grey/red,
  grey/yellow and brown. Grey/black went to T7a/2 on the cluster, grey/red
  went to T7c/1, grey/yellow went to T7/3 and brown went to ground. The
  wires from the cluster to the outside temp sensor were T7/2 and T7/4 and
  the wire to the oil temp sensor was T7b/2. I have an '87 16v - ymmv..)

I would say that the install is a pain in the ass, it's just not very
straightforward so you need a little bit of electrical know-how to do it
without catching anything on fire :)

HTH,

-Toby

On Wed, 18 Sep 2002, Brian Wagner wrote:

> I search the archive and didn't see any specifics, any help would be a ppreciated.
>
> TIA Brian
>