[Vwdiesel] Passat electrical woes is me.

[Dave Cook]

You mentioning backfeeding and such reminded me of something.

I had stored the car at a friends house a few blocks down while doing some landscaping work at my house.  I went to bring it back and couldn't get the thing to start!  It cranked and all that would cough on a squirt of ether, but wouldn't start.

I finally found that there was a ground wire from the battery connector directly to the body near down near the bottom of the battery.  I had disconnected this ground wire because I was attempting to move the car using a battery that wasn't correct-the terminals were on the wrong side and I couldn't fit the wires with this ground connected to the body.  

As soon as I found a way to get that wire to connect to the frame, the car started right up.

So, anyway, I would also look for this ground and clean it up.

Dave Cook

--- On Sun, 2/27/11, LBaird119 at aol.com <LBaird119 at aol.com> wrote:

From: LBaird119 at aol.com <LBaird119 at aol.com>
Subject: Re: [Vwdiesel] Passat electrical woes is me.
To: davevw at yahoo.com
Date: Sunday, February 27, 2011, 1:40 AM

In a message dated 2/26/2011 7:49:46 AM Pacific Standard Time, davevw at yahoo.com writes:



Another thought I had is if you are sure the current one is not working, try to open it up and see what you have.  Maybe some dust has worked its way in and is causing a short, or you will find a burned trace that could be repaired.  



Dave Cook







  Thanks Dave, 

  For once, on something kinda vague, I'm 98% - 99% certain it's the 

electronic brain.  If I jump the solenoid, it'll run.  It also powers up 

a few other things I can hear.  If I disconnect the plug to the ECU, 

it only powers the solenoid so the rest is backfeeding through the 

ECU.  Odds look like a bad power transistor. There's a bank of them 

right behind the socket and the pin for the stop solenoid goes pretty 

directly to one of them.

  All that pretty well indicates the wiring is good TO the ECU, makes 

contact into, through and out of the ECU but isn't being controlled 

by it when it seems that everything else is.  Kinda narrows it down 

as far as I can tell.  :-(

  At least it runs with a jumper but I don't think the wife will go for 

that!

    Loren