another wont start intermittent

[TDICADDGUY]

LMAO!! I hear you loud and clear. Look at my driveway in the background of this photo

I have on too many occasions to count told the wife to...

Pull in driveway
While holding the brake, place car in Neutral
Pull handbrake
Ease off on the brake and make sure car "holds"
Place car into Park.

Do you think that ever happens??? LOL Nope! Half the time she doesn't even use the handbrake. I quite expect to see the car across the street in the neighbours front lawn someday.

Can you even get into your garage without scraping/high-centering?!

Thats a heck of a driveway grade, do you have engineers in Canada or did Dudley Do-Right take a day off when your house was built? I do this stuff for a living...would have dropped that house pad at least 2 feet.

Back on topic...

 

[CWI_TDI]

The culprit...

It survived the first continuity and pull tests, but while fidgeting with other things, the connector finally separated. I suspect the green rubber insert helped the connection stay together longer than it should have. I might suggest, to the next guy who has to do this, sticking a MM probe in the connector, then working the connector to see if you get intermittent continuity. I simply checked it, and moved on to something else. Was nice that VW allowed an 8 inch or so service loop to make easier repairs.

Rolling the car back and forth rocked the engine in the mounts, and promoted intermittent continuity.

It's an OEM part, so, dealer wants $13 for the connector and $7 for the wire. So temporarily substituted a connector that fits very snugly on the signal terminal. Having a few of those and a crimper now a part of the tool bag.

A 6mm x 1.0 tap/die will clean the battery box hold down bolts.

Thanks to all who responded, to Whitedogs http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=199398 'start here' post - This was a great learning experience going thru this...cheers...

 

[DanG144]

Good job figuring it out.
Great job documenting and communicating.

Can you tell me which connector that is?
Provide the part numbers, since you know them?

DanG

 

[CWI_TDI]

Thats the connector that goes from battery gnd to Terminal 50 on the starter -bentley pg97-65

The oem connector part is 357 872 771 or DA55GF5 444571(or 444521). The part numbers are very small, hard to read even with a magnifying glass.

The wire has a part number but dont know what it is.

The blue connector is 1/4" by 3/4" and is the common connector found at any auto or hardware store.

 

[Ookpic]

Awesome work!!! I'm glad you got it figured out!

 

[aNUT]

I just found one of these broken wire intermittent start situations. Good information and pictures. Thanks. Oddly enough, it was also an automatic. Perhaps the extra width of the auto bellhousing kinks the wire more so than on the manual shift cars, and makes the 01M autos more prone to this failure.