TVR Tasmin, Switch Reconditioning

The final part of the interior job was to recondition a few of the switches. The window, panel and headlight switches all needed an overhaul.

Dirty Old Switches

It was pretty obvious just by looking at the window switches why they needed a strip down and clean

It’s no surprise that the windows were a tad slow, and the connectors had taken a real beating with excessive resistance melting the plastic around a couple of the pins. A sure sign of bad contact.

Disassembly and Cleaning

I decided to start with one of the window switches. These were filthy, having soaked up any fluff and muck that has been in the center console for years.

Start by removing the top casing from the bottom, using a small screwdriver to unhook the clips on each side. Before I removed it, I marked the top of the switch so I could refit the casing in the same orientation.

With the top casing off you can see the switch guts

Using that same small screwdriver carefully lever the toggle legs off their pins and lift the toggle up off the base. Take care, as under the toggle are two small plastic spring loaded pogo pins. Don’t let these ping away.

After a quick wipe down to remove the dust and dirt, this is what we have

Make sure to note which way the metal strips go as they aren’t all the same.

These are the little pogo pins in the toggle. They should face the other way with the spring going first into the toggle.

Remove the strips and inspect the contacts. Mine were coated in old dry grease and corrosion

I took the time to clean both the contacts and the strips and then using fine sandpaper give them all a good polish

The outer casing was given a good degrease and clean inside and out

The holes the pogo pins go into in the toggle had to be scraped out as old grease had solidified in there too. The pogo pins didn’t escape the cleaning, they carefully had all the grease removed. They needed it.

Once everything was clean it was time to reassemble. The strips and contacts got a thin coating of dielectric grease, as did the pogo pins and the toggle was refitted to the base. The casing was reinstalled and we were ready to go.

The action was now quite nice and solid. The muck in it previously must have been dampening the feel.

The other window switch wasn’t any better, so that got the same treatment.

Next was the panel light brightness switch. Unfortunately, this was in a pretty sorry state, with cracks and missing plastic in various places. Thankfully this switch doesn’t get a lot of use.

The contacts and strips in this were disgusting

Everything got cleaned up as much as possible

The cracks in the casing were glued up, and it was refitted.

The headlight switch was the last one I wasn’t to overhaul. The connector was in very bad shape, so I wanted to be sure the switch wasn’t causing it. Looking at how clean the switch was, I suspect it was recently replaced with a New Old Stock item.

This was mostly just old congealed grease. All that got cleaned out and the contacts polished

And that’s the switches done. Easy to strip down and clean, with minimal moving parts. They are quite a reliable design, but let down by not having the housing a bit better sealed, and the old grease drying out.

Bonus Wiring Repair

Before I could refit the center console and switches I had to do some quick repairs to the connectors on a couple of the switches. The headlight switch, in particular, had an issue with one terminal falling out as the plastic had melted from around the pin.

I had obtained replacement plugs from Minispares (Part PM03) as they sell a kit to replace the connectors for the Classic Mini hazard light switch. The plug isn’t identical, as it’s missing the locking tabs the TVR has, but it’s a nice tight fit regardless and shouldn’t fall out.

The kit comes with new pins too, but as my pins were OK I chose to reuse the existing ones in the new housings. Using a small flat blade I pushed the locking tabs on each side of the pin in and slipped it out the back of the housing. Flip the tabs back out again, and into the new housing it goes. The big white plug is the old one, the black one is the new one.

The only other one I needed to replace was the blower fan switch, as for some reason this didn’t even have a plug at all, just bare terminals stuck on the pins and wrapped in tape! Bodge city.

This was as easy as just transferring the pins into the housing in the correct order

Mad Gains

The center console went in next, and it was finally time to refit the switches into their freshly wrinkle-painted panel

The radio blank needs to be stuck in, but it looks good with the rest of the console

The switch panel looks a damn sight better than the old peeling and rusty look

The windows are still slow, I’ll need to get in there and clean and grease the runners as I did for my SD1 (same regulator), but the blower fan and headlight switches work more reliably, and it appears I’ve gained a new full brightness setting on my dash lights.

All in all a good achievement, even just to know the switches will keep working for a bit longer.