Club 80-90 Forums

Aidan wrote: ↑13 Aug 2020, 17:31 often wear the ignition switch electrical connection maker, always carry a spare, pretty straightforward to change

Thanks and I see it at BW shop.
Order one and its worth changing.
Watched some vids of the job, useful.
See how it goes..

I do have a bit of makeshift wiring in there,
the clipped in wire goes to a map light.
Could be done better..

I got the switch to fit now,
but before it arrived it "broke down" again..
and this time no lights on dash at all.
And it was on my drive, not far from the tools.
So I had a good poke about,
bad earth from the battery, 
much better with a jumplead earth instead.
So I remade a different earth place and it seems fine.
Time will tell but this could have been the problem.
Been told that a bad battery earth has varied ill effects.

Ok so time has told,
filled up with petrol and then it turned over but no firing up.
Tried, waited, tried.. no joy. Red face..
But hey, maybe the AA can come before it starts!
Not likely but I call them.
Open up the back and listen and look at the motor.
Get past the long Covid chat, and what to do when you break down,
select the options, yes member, no this, yes that...
some time later, still not spoken to anyone try the key.
Starts! so turn it off and go to close up the back. Hang up the phone..
Will it start again? No... and then yes..
Another long days driving, country, city, motorway..
lots of stoping and starting again no problems, random nuisance.
Havent fitted the ignition switch yet, but now suspect the idle control.
Just because of the sound of it, or not, being relevant.
Although I need to do more breaking down to be sure!

 

I had this with the SA 2.6 years ago, turned out to be thanks to some auto electrics monkey poking around in a previous life, managed to cause an intermittent short in the ecu wiring that would spike the ecu...
Took some finding too.

Good luck in your quest!

PS why can these idiots never bother to look up the terminal diagram for the back of the relay board and find the appropriate spare one for an accessory? Butchering the wiring harmess about is inexcusable at any level and I've been on the receiving end of supposedly "professional" VW T3 services who have done the same...

Scotchloks. Uuurrrgh.

Final update I hope!
No symptoms at all since I installed the coil body earth to the head,
which is standard fitment on the Golf, a long flat length of copper.
Now I cant be 100% sure its that, its not the only thing I tweaked..
Scientiffically correlation is not evidence of causation.
....not that the media these days thinks like that!
Today I had it examined, by the best tuner I could possibly find,
and also asked him to check over anything that could make it unreliable.
One thing he noticed was that at both ends of the throttle cable,
it wasnt allowing for full throttle movement!
So thats an improvement in itself.
But generally just basic settings and cleaning.
I think hes going to have more fun when he looks at the 1.8T

 

This old chestnut!
Spoils my faith in the old van,
its a rare problem, but there..

AA man, but its intermittent.
Fixed, not fixed, fixed, not again..
but he persisted, good man.

We are pretty certain its the red wire,
that goes into the fuel pump relay,
bad connection at that point.

He said there are ways to hard wire it.

As it is the socket that the relay pushes into,
pushes the socket of the red wire down,
and I have to then push the red wire up.
That then gives a good connection,
we have worked hard at this so far.
It may never give trouble again..

As I never noticed until now that the relay,
kind of pushed the red wire connector down,
(inside the connector socket block thing)
of course this could all be a red herring,
but any words of wisdom?

I admire your perseverance Rollercoaster!
These problems are often require a slow process of elimination, so if this isn't the final fix at least you're a step closer.