[Vwdiesel] 97 Passat Glow system

[Val Christian]

Loren, 

I don't have a Passat, but I can tell you that the relay is a PITA on the
ALH TDI.  I have chased that goose, and consequently, have a spare working
relay.  The relays don't fail like they did on the early IDIs.

Before you do all that work...do you have a DC current probe?  Or could you
buzz out the harness with a helper cycling the GP form inside the car?

Individual plugs can be detected with an ohm meter, or even better yet, with 
a 12V power supply (like a battery) with a current meter, to verify the 
draw.  Older GP had a habit of sometimes failing like a light bulb that gets 
yellow as it gets older with a small hot spot.  When they fail like that
the continuity will be good, but the current draw, and therefore heat output 
will be low.

The TDI ALH plug harness has contact problems with corosion, and while I
have bought a spare harness, I have managed to get all my ALHs to run OK
on their existing harness.

Back to the relay/fuse.  On the ALHs that I have, it is a knuckle cutting 
40 minute job, and I don't recommend it if you can rule out things with a 
meter.  The relay is in the wiper tray.  

Again, I cannot address the specifics of your 96 and 97, but I can encourage 
you to use other methods.  Heck, once, I even sprinkled snow on the plugs 
while cycling them, to see which one didn't melt snow so that I could 
pull it.  I am sure there are other ways to identify your issues before 
you go digging.

Val

 
> 
> 
> Dad's car has been starting hard in this cold.  Starts but lots of cranking so he suspected all 3 glow plugs had failed (one's been broken off for years).  I figured that wasn't likely.  So far we found no power going to the glow plugs but the plugs are good.  That leaves the GP relay or the fuse.
>   As I understand it, both are burried up where the sun don't shine, behind the dash somewhere.  
>   Anybody know WHERE they are in there before I start digging?  Descriptions say being a contortionist helps and if you know right where it all is, it still takes a good 15 minutes to check/change and that's with dropping the knee bar which I was able to move in the past, but not drop.
>   I've seen a picture of  both but it was close in enough that you couldn't tell where it was.  Looked like a shot with the dash removed but obviously wasn't.  Anybody done it that can shed some "light" on this?  Seems Dad's '97 is much harder than my '96, as it has the relay on the fuse panel where his has a jumper,  to power the relocated (where it's hard to find and get to).  Didn't find anything saying if the fuse was relocated from '96 to '97.
>    TIA
>      Loren
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