[T3] Mystery Miss

Dave Hall dave at hallvw.clara.co.uk
Sat May 7 17:25:20 PDT 2016


Be careful with the test light wires - the ignition stays live (and unfused)
whenever the ignition is on.  It's a remote possibility that the miss is due
to an intermittent ignition switch or connection, but it is possible.  

I'm not confident you would notice a momentary dimming of the test light on
a normal bulb between 15 and ground. I wonder if a test light, or maybe an
LED, wired between terminal 15 and another live connection - say the
interior light fuse - would remain off until the ignition went off.  That
way you would see a brief flash, rather than try to spot a momentary
dimming.  Obviously you would need to disconnect when not running the car.

If not already done, I think you should check the spark plugs for signs of
one being sootier than the others.  It might narrow down which cylinder is
misfiring.

Dave
UK VW Type 3&4 Club
===================

-----Original Message-----
From: type3-vwtype3.org [mailto:type3-vwtype3.org-bounces at lists.vwtype3.org]
On Behalf Of Daniel Nohejl
Sent: 07 May 2016 22:44
To: type3 at vwtype3.org
Subject: Re: [T3] Mystery Miss


> On 7 May 2016 at 13:54, Phil Hof wrote:
> 
>> One electrical FI gremlin I once had, and is easy to miss (no pun
>> intended) was inside those clear connectors (T1 and T2) that you push 
>> a female tab connector into and slide onto the male spade.  One 
>> example is wire 19 (pump signal) on the engine bay; another is the 
>> head temp sensor connector.  On more than one occasion, I´ve seen 
>> them pushed into the plastic housing, but instead of being slid OVER 
>> the male tab, they were slid NEXT TO the tab.  It looked fine on the 
>> outside if the plastic was yellowed or cloudy, and it would make 
>> contact, but as temperature and vibration did their thing, it could 
>> lose contact.
> 
> Yeah, I've seen that, too. In fact, the first time I saw this it was 
> done by a dealer mechanic, so it's not just a novice thing. It's easy 
> to do wrong if you're in a hurry, but also easy to do right if you're 
> willing to take the extra time to do the job well.

I could see that being an issue but we no longer have any of those T1 or T2
connectors. When communicating with Joe about the harness, there was some
confusion about the “gender” of the FI harness ends vs the main harness
ends. We wound up getting a harness with the opposite gender of what we
needed at wire 19 and at the ECU power wires. While we don’t have those
plastic connectors, we have all potentially exposed metal covered with
electrical tape and far away from anything they could contact. 

I like William’s idea about fashioning a test light for the + side of the
coil. I’m going to get on that tomorrow!
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