First off let me admit that I am totally and unashamedly new to, (and rather slow at), this sort of thing. My grandfather raced dirt track cars, my dad and his three brothers all raced and later built cars as a hobby, my cousins are all riding self-built rides. But I remain the black sheep of the family, the automotive dumbass...

That said, here's my situation.

My dad presented me with a 1991 teal RS, (camaro), with a T5, (and a crinked passenger door and fender), as a graduation present. Let it sit for any length of time and it drains the battery, that means a short right?

Now the first impulse would be to get help if my family is so chock full of autophiles, but -> my car -> my problem. I'm going to fix this one way or another, and do some other stuff to this car and whip it out in front of all my cuz's to show that I can do this sort of thing if I try.... so there.

If my above short assumption is correct I've already identified two problem areas: the dimmer switch won't 'click', (or dim), and I have a replacement to drop in as soon as I steal a steering wheel puller from somewhere. The other area of concern is the tachometer. It says 9000 at idle and 1000 in second gear, and a whole range of bizarre numbers in between, and the idiot lights keep trying to get me to go up from fifth into reverse, (which I've heard is a bad thing), or down from first into... limbo.

So how do you fix a faulty tachometer? (I guess I should mention there are a blue and grey wire dangling behind the gas pedal labled "to tach" and "to speed" or something similar).

Annd, as I was trying to take the gauge pod out to inspect the tach, (like it would do any good), I got so far as getting the plastic frame around the guage pod and steering column off, and hung up there. My headlight switch is mounted just to the left of the steering column and has a mushroom shaped **** over a thingy you push in and pull out. (what do you call that kind of switch?) This **** prevented me from removing the plastic frame, (which is called what?), and I wound up breaking whatever was holding the entire switch assembly in place trying to figure it out, (relate back to the "dumbass" remark). I got the switch stationary and working again by jury rigging a mount behind it, made of metal pipe wrap secured on either end by dash mounting screws, how embarassing... works tho). So how do you correctly remove the light switch? After I do that I'll figure out how to fix the bracket it was on, I hope.

Well, Thank you for your time and hopefully patience, I'll prolly be in here asking more stupid questions in the near future.

May the force be with y'all....

Levi

 

Welcome to the boards

Unfortunalty I spent too much time typing and the board logged me off & screwed up my post so you're getting a cliffnotes version

The highbeam switch is on the lower part of the stering column, left side, off center from the top, you don't have to take off the steering wheel

The tach could just be burnt up from an electrical short.
A diagram here shows the wiring
http://92b4crs.tripod.com/86wiring/dia-pics/81-0.jpg
(drag this link to the addy bar of your browser to view)
The tach has a white wire going directly to the negative side of the coil (smaller wwhite wire on it).

The T5 trans has a switch (sensor?) in the middle (drivers side) of the casing. I'm not rock solid on how it works but, I believe it is for the reverse lights and lets the ECM know if the trans is in 5th (hopefully someone will want to verify/correct that if I'm wrong)

The headlight switch has a 1/8ish" button on the top or side (I forget) that has to be pressed while pulling the headlight switch stem out. I had to get to mine by reaching up under the dash. It may be easier in a 90-92 dash, I don't know..

Hopefully that's at least a start to helping you out...

(nice avatar too )

 

Heck yea, the cliff notes version was a great start. I'm printing the diagram now and pulling the pod tomorrow. Thanks much.