[Vwdiesel] updates & reply to the electrical system

[Travis Gottschalk]

I can attest that electrical issues can be very hard to find. At the mine we had our guys, Cat people and another vender's mechanics all trying to find an issue on a D10T dozer where it wouldn't start after being washed and brought to the shop. Took a whole week and it was just some water in a plug somewhere by the end of the very expensive week of searching. Also had a D11R dozer that was sending a bunch of codes randomly, that one was another hard one to track down-bare wires in a large wire harness. My point it that it can be hard to find but it is possible to find. My rabbit truck on my honeymoon was giving the red alt light off just a bit on it. The volts were low on the cheapo gauge as well. I couldn't find the issue. It was starting fine but I was worried. Finally I tracked it down to about 3 inches before the plug going to the alt the wires were broken inside some. I trimmed it down and it was fine. I got so made by the time I got to the harness I just cut the plug off with a knife. In doing so it pulled out the broken wire and problem was found. Over time with vibration the harness broke inside.

Updates on other things. After taking down a 40 foot windmil tower yesterday morning and hauling it to my brother place we started and finished his suspension. The tower if no one has seen it done gets unbolted from the base that is in the ground and then with some C clamps and a pivot point thing hooked up to a truck you can bring it down really easily. Then about 6 of us lifted it on the trailer and we were off. They weigh around 800 lbs. This one was from my sister inlaws grandfather and they have a picture back in the early 1900 with the 2 year old grandfather helping pump water. 

To the suspension we did the whole suspension on the 05 jetta wagon of my brothers. FSD Koni shocks, 1 inch lift from Kerma, ball joints, tie rod ends, lower control arm bushings, rear axle bushings. Not the most fun in the world but having a couple special tools really helped. I have the strut spreader tool (cold chisel works but not very well), a tool to press in the rear axle bushing (someone on tdiclub had about 12 made and it was nice), the strut nut tool and then the new car lift my brother had made a nice job of it all. 

Well, off now to a lawn and garden tractor we are working on (JD of course, we are painting one up that has a loader and backhoe attachments on them). As a side note last weekend I just bought myself a JD332 L&G tractor-diesel. 

Travis Gottschalk