Experience with OER dimmer switch (rheostat)

Hi,

I was curious to know people's experiences with the OER dimmer switch (part number MB16951). I recently ordered one from a supplier in Sweden and was quite dissapointed with the quality of the product. Firstly, there is a lot of play within the wheel itself, making it a bit wobbly and cheap feeling. It is also a lot harder than my old one to turn the wheel and really squeaky when doing so. Compared to my old oem one (which stopped working) this feels a lot cheaper (despite the very steep price).

Have I gotten a poor sample, or is this to be expected from the reproduction parts? If I decide to keep it I might be able to make it easier to turn the wheel by just lubricating the mechanism. Does anyone have any tips as to which product to use that won't cause any issues?

I wanna know too since i have to replace mine at some point. It's currently jumpered.
But i guess NOS or used is probably the way to go.

Send it back and get one from @devinism

The biggest issue with OE mopar dash lite rheostadt is its wire-windings
get oxidized making poor/intermittant contact. By pulling it out and cleaning the
windings, coat it very lightly with dialectric grease . And re-install...
IMHO...
The majority of mopar after-market switches and controls sourced mainly from China
are of very poor quailty, may work out-of-the-box but fail shortly after. Note that many
of the OE mopar switches can be rebuilt by taking them apart, cleaning the contacts
and coating the contacts lightly with dialectric grease..

Just my $0.02...

Depending on what's wrong with your current one, it can be fixed. I took mine apart, epoxied the rheostat winding into the wheel, cleaned contacts, and put it back together. New, replacement parts are disappointing.

Thank you for the replies! My oem unit doesn't look too bad, but it is oxidized and doesn't give the expected readings when measuring it, which I believe is why my dash lights aren't working.

You've encouraged me to maybe just try to fix the old one. Did you drill out the rivets and replace with screws, or how did you go about it?

It's been a while, but I used some flush cutters to uncurl the small end of the shaft and pulled it out. Put it back together and tapped the end back down.

threewood said:

It's been a while, but I used some flush cutters to uncurl the small end of the shaft and pulled it out. Put it back together and tapped the end back down.

Click to expand...

@threewood Thank you for the response! That sounds promising, so am I understanding you correctly in that you basically used the cutters to form the part of the pin marked in red, so that it fit through the hole and then at the end, tapped it with a hammer to make it wider than the hole again?

Sorry for the potentially stupid questions, but also once it's been disassembled, which areas of contact should I be cleaning? I want to avoid messing too much with it, to avoid breaking it. The dome light works, but as mentioned, not the gauge cluster lights.

Thanks!

Yep, that is correct. If you end up having to cut it off, a replacement piece could be made or found.

Thought I'd update the thread in case it would help someone else.

After your advise, I decided to disassemble my unit and try to fix it. I tapped out the rivets and got to work. Testing it with a multimeter made it quite clear that it was the connection between the wire windings and the circular center piece which was causing the issue due to corrosion, as suggested earlier in the thread.

Not sure if you can see in the image, but after bending that center piece up, I saw the corrosion and was able to get to work. The image was taken after I had already done some work to it. It took some elbow grease but after some work I was finally able to get varying resistance measurements when holding one end on the circular piece and the other on different places on the wire windings. Before reassembly I put a decent amount of dielectric grease on the various places where connections were being made, to reduce the risk of future corrosion.

After that I reassembled it. I decided to drill out the tapered holes in the body of the rheostat and used a bolt and nut rather than reusing the rivets, as I was unsure if they were going to hold.

Since I had bent the circular piece to access the corrosion, it didn't give as good connection as I wanted initially, so it took a couple of tries to force it down properly. It was also quite finicky to get the gears back in the correct spot but after MANY tries, I managed to get it right.

Last image shows the final product. Decided to go with dimmable white Led lights, so I could choose brightness freely and I'm very happy with the results.

Thanks again everyone for all the help!