Shift Light

I have a 1988 245 with a manual transmission. If I drive over about 50
miles, the shift light comes on, and stays on. If I stop and restart
the car, it is still on. If we are away for the weekend, it will stay
on the entire time, and not go off until we are back home on Monday.
Two questions:

What is the probable problem?

Is it OK to just remove the bulb in the Instrument Cluster, and forget
about it?

Thanks!

John

 

Probably a cracked solder joint in the control box. You can unplug the
box and forget about it, I did that in my 740 because it would come on
in 4th gear going up hills, it seemed to have no load sensing. I don't
know where it is in a 240, mine is too old to have one, and the 740 has
it with the rest of the relays in the fuse panel, but in 240s that stuff
is spread out.

 

James Sweet laid this down on his screen :

Thanks, James!

 

no load sensing at all, as far as i can tell it just lights up when
you hit 2000 rpm and you're not in top gear.

 

Which makes it fairly useless, Saab had a better shift indicator in the
old 900 series, it had a vacuum line to the control box so it would
alter the shift points it recommends based on load.

 

most of the shift light volvos, at least 240s (maybe all of them)?
didn't have tachs. although you don't really need a tach to decide to
shortshift.
but that also prevented the driver from figuring out how dumbass the
light was. i didn't figure it out until i installed a tach out of a
junked 240 model which had had one. couldn't believe my eyes.

 

I've only driven a few manual Volvos that didn't have a tach. All 700
series had a tach standard, even the automatic models. Tach was standard
in all the turbo 240s, and a common option in other manual models.