Automatic Gearbox position indicator light

[Dazzle]

Hi all, I have yet to drive my 1995 2.5 diesel engined Bongo at night. It has occured to me that I need to know (and see) what position the gearselector is doing when changing the gears (it's an automatic). My gear selector is not illuminated and although this is of no consequence during daytime use, at night this could be a problem. I have yet to dissasemble and see if there is a lamp inside and wether it is blown ot not - but I wanted to hopefully get some advice on taking the selector apart first. I have a Owners Handbook and Workshop manual but from what I can see the actual sequence of dissasembly is not shown or the electrical diagram. Any advice would be super ! Thanks.

[g8dhe]

Yes there is a lamp, the heat from it is what causes the thin plastic indicator strip crack up over time - replacing with an LED doesn't help as it needs a wide spread of light not a narrow cone

[Dazzle]

Thanks for that G8DHE. Your photo was very helpful and armed with the knowledge it portrayed, this afternoon I decided to have a 'look see'. Dissasembly was quite straightforward and the lamp was easily found. I took the lamp out and bench tested it - it showed continuity accross the filament and just to be sure I put 12VDC across it - that confirmed the light worked. So why didn't mine illuminate ? I checked the wiring as far as I could before it vanished into a large loom and all (as far as I could see) looked ok. A look for the lamp on the website electrical diagrams proved impossible to find and no mention was made in the Fuse tables. After lots of pondering ........... I turned 'on' the lights on the Control Column and 'I'll be darned' the lamp worked as it should ! So there was nothing wrong all the time ! That's the 2nd time the Bongo wiring has 'caught me out'. The first was when the Brake Lights worked WITHOUT the ignition being turned on - all perfectly normal !

'Growing pains' or 'paranoia' ? ...... probably a bit of both ? but at least I'm a little older and wiser than before ?

Thanks

[g8dhe]

It is actually shown

but there are a LOT of these little illumination lights about the Bongo so they get hidden away on odd manual pages but they all get linked to from this page on the right-hand side

[Dazzle]

Thank you once again G8dhe. After spending £70 on a Workshop manual and £20 on a Bongo handbook I think I should go that one step further and purchase a Wiring manual ? Having 'hard-copy' wiring diagrams in front of you instead of having to flip through page after page of web pages containing the wiring diagrams might be the way to go ?

Most grateful for your response.

[g8dhe]

Depends what you prefer! The diagrams are linked together so you can click from page to page, with English Contents and Index whilst the paper version is only in Japanese, you can always print the on-line version as well of course, you will need Flash installed however - at present.