CorsePerVita

Even though a car can be pretty and wonderful, my experiences have found me to never trust a car even when it looks awesome. My last experience with a Porsche, my 914, caused me to be stranded on the side of the road with an electrical fire. Thankfully, it was limited, and was able to go out from disconnecting the battery quickly and I had to replace the harness. No actual damage to the car other than a bunch of burnt up wires and a ruined harness and replacing part of the ignition system. Could have been far worse.

That said... people always talk crap about how european cars always have electrical issues, but after going through my cars i've learned that of course with age, any car can have electrical issues. Electrical isn't discriminatory except if it's neglected. Seems to me most the cars I buy, that particular subject is entirely neglected at some point through it's history. It's not always the previous owner's fault, if it was brought in it could have been missed. It's a simple thing to miss and can cause some horrible issues.

Today I decided to hop under and look at things and see what was up.

- Grounded portion of the ignition wires looked pretty gnarly.
- Various sensors had old, brittle and crapped out wires.
- A lot of the wires for various grounds throughout the bay were old and had oil/dirt/crap all over them
- The heater wires were falling apart at the ends and were really bad looking.

So i took it upon myself to clean it up. I got out my little electrical project box (crimpers, wires, heatshrink, various ends, etc... you name it) and went at it. All it takes is that bit of corrosion, a bad wire, bad connection and things can get bad really quick.









I'll get some after pics later, getting dark outside, figured i'd at least get the before out of the way. I also took my dremel to the plate to get everything refreshed and cleaned. Took it for a drive to check and make sure all was well. No hot wires, no hot grounds, all nice and cold, nice solid grounds.

More importantly. Peace of mind! Next will be to do under the dash. Few previous owner cringes down there, nothing major.

Ed Hughes

Good move. For the record, I don't think people lump German cars into the category of Euro cars with electrical issues.

Check the negative strap from the battery as well, those can deteriorate, and they cost less than $10 at the auto parts store.

whalebird

The issues arise when somebody starts messing with things. The majority of issues I've seen are related to aftermarket stereo/alarm/phone/radar. Porsche/bosch electronics are among the best in the world. Ed is dead on...battery terminals and leads are critical.

CorsePerVita

Yeah and there is some rigged stuff under the dash, I plan on searching it down to find out exactly what it is and making it right.

Good call on the battery, i'll do that next thing Going to make sure this car gets the TLC it deserves.

rusnak

Those factory copper looking connectors look better than the aftermarket zinc ones. I think a small brass brush to clean the contacts, fuse holders, and grounds, plus clean or replace the battery clamps and cables, and the starter cables will be more than satisfactory. There are a couple of places where you'd do well to add fuses or relays, but that's it.

CorsePerVita

They're actually very dirty and testing with a multimeter had a few gnarly spots on them, i was able to sand down and reuse most of them, others were pretty nasty and I replaced with the ones you see above. I used a few of those connectors but I'm unfortunately out of new copper ends. Think I'll invest in them since they do such a good job with a good connection. But that is a good valid point since it'd make for better connections.

As to the fuses and relays, what would you recommend? I'm open for suggestions if it'll provide more reliability and peace of mind for my baby.