What the....

["Jim Haseltine" <Jim@ur-q.freeserve.co.uk>]

Today I've been pulling the interior of my Ur quattro. All fine and dandy,
straight forward job until I tried to get the fascia out and found that the
company that fitted the alarm managed to wrap most of their cable around
things effectively tying the fascia place. By disconnecting things I got the
dash out and then took a look at the electrics. Hmm. This car has seen more
cowboys than the average John Wayne film - there are cables that are too
short, cables that are far too long, miles of electrical tape and more tie
wraps than you can shake a stick at.

In all of this I found what looked like a loop of OE loom, so to be sure I
traced it through the car. The loom is #443 971 119 A and consists of a two
contact multiplug with two cables attached to one of the contacts. The
cables run for approx 20 feet and terminate at the other contact of the same
multiplug. The other half of the plug has two thick yellow cables attached
to one terminal and a thick yellow/green cable attached to the other. The
yellow/green cable is attached to a purple relay-sized unit (#431 951 253 G)
in position #18 on the relay carrier. #18 is listed as daytime running
lights/city running lights.

What possible use is a 20 foot long jumper cable when a few inches or less
would work just as well? Are they possibly using the resistance of the cable
for something?

Jim Haseltine