Date:         Fri, 16 Aug 2013 22:15:35 -0700
Reply-To:     neil n <musomuso@GMAIL.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         neil n <musomuso@GMAIL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Broken down travelers need help ASAP
Comments: To: David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net>
In-Reply-To:  <520efd69.4826e00a.201d.4350@mx.google.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

way cool and way to find and repair the fault(s)

Speaks of keeping notes on work done and supplying that to the next owner.

(though really. For most owner/operators doing their own work, who'd-a
thought of a failure like that? Says he who had 2 relay failures in
part due to his own work.     ;)    )

And I understand the scaffold, I think. I made and installed something
similar ( I assume) to support a part of my wiring harness that ended
up getting repositioned (yet again) along and in front of the LR area
in front of the tail light.

Anyhow. Not about me. Just citing an example of a subsequent similar
preemptive repair.

Neil.

On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 9:34 PM, David Beierl <dbeierl@attglobal.net> wrote:

>
> There were a bunch of things it wasn't, but changing the ECU fixed
> it.  Unfortunately the bad ECU worked fine in my van, and still
> worked fine when we put it back where it came from.
>
> It was a disintegrated ground connection to the ECU.  A PO had
> extended the ECU ground by about seven inches so it could be cabled
> along with the rest of the harness, using two insulation-displacing
> connectors of the type invented by 3M (but not actual 3M ones).  One
> of them was running warm and the other had completely melted out the
> plastic around the metal insert and the connection had failed.
>
> An iatrogenic** problem was caused by exercising the connection to
> the Hall sender on the distributor -- the last six inches of the
> wires to the connector had become brittle and broke into many small
> segments, damaging the + and - wires leading into the connector; and
> we ended up having to heat and strip the brittle insulation with a
> torch and build a scaffold to support the damaged wires out to where
> good wire could be spliced in.  Bill's got a couple photos.  It's a
> work of art, for some value of "art".


--
Neil n

Blog: tubaneil.blogspot.ca

'88 Westy http://tinyurl.com/c8rlw6p

'81 VanaJetta 2.0 "Jaco"  http://tubaneil.googlepages.com/

Vanagon VAG Gas inline-VR Engine Swap Group:

http://tinyurl.com/d7gd5ej