Wiring help please!

[VR6Rado 0]

My garage has just condemned the Corrado on the basis of burnt out wiring, with the quote "I'm surprised you've not had a fire yet". The symptom was that the passenger headlamp was a little dim then failed under full beam.

 

He's taken 4 hours so far to track back a burnt out wire that ran down to the radiator sender, which looks like it's damaged the wiring loom on passenger side that runs near the gearbox (runs to radiator and passenger lamps). He's unwilling to provide a quote for the repairs at this point, because he doesn't know how extensive the damage is and therefore work involved.

 

Please can you advise on the best course of action? I've not done wiring before so don't know how much work / how fiddly this would be if I tried it myself. Equally, I'd struggle to justify spending say 3 days of garage time to fix it all. Am now facing the potential of walking away from the car, which makes me sad. I know I have other plans to work on the car such as respray and front steering/suspension, so it's all mounting up.

 

Should I get another wiring loom - are they available from VW or scrapyards?

 

Alternatively, if there are any Guernsey based Corrado fans who can help show me what to do, I'm a pretty quick learner.

 

Thanks in advance

[Rams 0]

Is it just the headlight loom wiring or does it trace back to the headlight switch?

 

You could get another loom I'm sure and whilst there check the headlight switch, pop to out and see if the wiring is ok as these have a habit of getting hot and melting.

 

Also good time to upgrade the wiring loom as many have done, makes them much brighter and more efficient pulling the power.

 

Don't think you need to walk away from this issue matey, I'm sure some others can help you with parts. If you can give us some more info on where the wiring is burnt out we can help you further. There's also a yellow resistor for the headlights and sometimes if the car has had an upgraded loom people forget to disconnect it or remove the resistor and that can cause problems.

 

Rams

[VR6Rado 0]

Rams

 

Thanks for the encouragement! I really don't want to walk away. The wire he's focused on is a red wire that runs down to the sender at bottom of radiator, which has burnt out. My ignorance is such that that I don't know how many looms there are to get/ buy. That's definitely causing an issue as the car runs hot from time to time then settles back down.

 

I've a new headlight switch to fit at some point too, was looking at the headlamp upgrade but needed to fix the basics first!

 

Paul

[VW_OwneR_85 2]

dont walk away , i can offer help, but im not exaclty an electrical expert, what exact problems do you have? by the sounds of it the wireing harness on that side is just an absolute mess?

 

 

have a look here @ A1/05 on the left, i think thats your red wire, A1 is one of the yellow fusebox plugs, the 05 means its pin number 5 on that plug,

 

http://www.a2resource.com/electrical/CE2.html

 

i would say dont get another wireing loom, if you did get another loom you would still have to remove your old one, so if you want to go down that road you might aswell remove it and remove all the old loom tape {black wrapp} and check the wires indivdualy and repair them as and when,

Edited May 16, 2013 by VW_OwneR_85

[VR6Rado 0]

Progress update...

 

The burnt out wire turned out to be the "alternator exciter wire" that had burnt out years ago, damaging the wiring loom in the process. It had subsequently been fixed by someone who simply bypassed the wire direct back to fusebox and not repairing the loom. Over time this had degraded, affecting things like the cooling management system.

 

Huge thanks to Chris aka VW_Owner_85 for his skills, workshop and spare engine wiring loom. We got the car back up and running on Sunday, having replaced around 20 sections of wire! Car now runs much smoother and cooler, with peace of mind that the engine wiring loom is now safe and sorted.

 

Next challenge is to resolve the mystery of why the passenger headlight is still weak and causes both main beams to glow slightly when on, then disappears completely when main beam is switched on.

[Jim Bowen 1]

Great news, well done that man :D

[VW_OwneR_85 2]

TY ;) , luckily no other wireing looms were affected by this , just the main section that comes out behind the servo to ecu then to the starter motor etc etc , but yea seems like this whole thing was started by that blue alternator wire years ago, when i was unplugging the engine wireing plugs i noticed one of the wires {blue} being elecy taped up and then being ran seperatly across over the steering coloumn and out through the bulk head , so i traced this back to the alternator, double checked the plug pin out with ce2 wireing diagrams and thats fine, pulled apart the rest of the harness and its clear to see blue melted plastic from that old wire which has burnt through the other wires which wernt fixed at the time and gotten slowly worse. so im putting that down as the cause of this, thing is that new alternator wire they put it had signs of melting/getting hot aswell!!!! so im inclined to say that what ever fault that caused it may stil be there, but with most electrics working fine its hard to say, but atleast you have the headlight fault to start from...