[T3] Mystery Miss

[Daniel Nohejl]

Ok, I think we may have solved it!

Figuring something must be loose because bumps would trigger the problem, we started tugging on wires and connectors with the motor running. By tugging on where the MPS wiring meets the power wires for the ECU, we were able to get the motor to miss repeatedly at idle. It took a while to figure out if it was the MPS itself, the MPS wiring, or the power wires. At one point, in moving wires, the motor cut out entirely. After more careful jiggling and isolating all the wires from each other, we isolated the problem to the ECU power wires. If they were jiggled just so, the motor would miss. On two occasions, I was able to get the motor to cut out entirely.

It’s funny, but I think I just mentioned a day or two ago that when we got our new harness back in January of 2013 we had to build a mini-harness to connect the main wiring harness to the FI harness. This is a picture from 3.5 years ago of what we have so there’s no longer a worm clamp on the MPS hose (which has been renewed several times) and the exposed metal on the connectors has long since been covered with electrical tape

http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1503546.jpg <http://images.thesamba.com/vw/gallery/pix/1503546.jpg>

The interesting thing was that when I touched the electrical taped ends of the black and white power wires together, the motor stalled. This may have been our issue going back to last year!! Based on engine vibration and whatnot, those wires could have been coming in and out of contact with each other for a long time. Brief contact could be the miss and sustained contact could be the motor cut out. 

For the short term, we routed the wires well apart from each other so they can’t come into contact. However, we still have our original T2 connector. I was thinking that unless there’s an issue with doing so, we’d snip the male connectors off of our FI harness, use some butt connectors to install a little bit more wire, fit some female connectors, and run them through the T2 connector so they fit to the long male ends of our main harness. Does this sound like a valid fix?









> On May 11, 2016, at 2:52 PM, William J <catnine09 at dslextreme.com> wrote:
> 
> These boots used to come with Bosch plug wire sets yet they were black and lasted decades . he first set I got came with 8 . They do tend to hang on the spark plugs yet easy to get them out with long nose pliers without wrecking them.
> 
> William
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Adney" <jadney at VWType3.org>
> To: <type3 at vwtype3.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2016 9:46 AM
> Subject: Re: [T3] Mystery Miss
> 
> 
>> On 11 May 2016 at 9:29, Jim Adney wrote:
>> 
>>> The VW part # is 311 905 444A. I just called my dealer and they said
>>> this is still a good number, but the price is now out of sight: $22.91
>>> each!
>> 
>> I just discovered that if I leave the A off the search, I get a lot
>> more hits. The price comes down to $16 or 8 Euros (less than $9)
>> each. Dave Hall might be able to buy some for 8 Euros in England and
>> bring them to the Invasion. They're small, so not a problem to pack.
>> 
>> -- 
>> *******************************
>> Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
>> Madison, Wisconsin, USA
>> *******************************
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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> 
> 
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