Hi,

79 928, manual, euro, right hand drive.

I'm finally getting stuck into the electrics on the car to try to straighten that out. Right now none of the dash gauges work, but I'm working on it.

The first obvious thing I need to sort out before going much further is finding what to do with 2 loose ground wires in the driver's footwell:




One hangs down from pretty much the centre of the footwell. It follows along on top of the 'rope' of wires, like it's heading for the centre console, but has come loose from somewhere and so is just hanging down. (apologies for poor pic quality... camera doesn't do macro pics too well)



The other is coming from the centre console. This one looks a bit, well 'modified' is probably a generous word... lump of solder hooking it into something else:




Could someone please take a look at their car and see what wiring they have? I haven't found anywhere obvious for either end to plug into, and I don't know whether they should just connect to each other. One seems to have the end stripped like it is going into a connector but the other is just cut clean.

I'm wondering maybe was it a bit of modding to cater for a stereo but I'm only speculating. Either way I need to work out how it should go and put it right.

Kev.

 

The first thing i would check is to see what wasn't working on the car. If all O.K. then could be a aux ground that wasn't used for the options on your MY that the PO used for - like you said stereo or some other asc. Untill it becomes an issue of something not working that should- just tuck them away for the time untill you are shure what they are for.

 

I know what you mean, if it ain't broke..., but I've got a good few electrical issues on the car at the moment... none of the dash gauges work, the blower comes on full and I can't turn it off, interior lights not working for example. I'm hoping the ground hanging in the driver's footwell will help with the dash gauges.

 

Put your voltmeter on it and a chassis ground with the ignition key set to Run to insure that it really is a Ground wire...not all brown wires are always grounds...and the fact that a prior owner tied in to it may mean that it is a signal or power wire.

If *all* of your dash gages are out, then check your dash gage fuse, too. Also have a look behind your pod to see that all of the cables are connected to your gage floppy circuit board.

 

I agree with the first part of the first sentence. If you don't see evidence of butchering, you can assume brown is ground (as per Porsche's coding). To be safe, trace it to its origin. And there are threads here on where the pod and gauges ground, with pics, IIRC, not too hard a deal to remove and clean connections and that would be a good thing. If I was doing that, I would replace bulbs while in there.

 

Well its pretty easy to tell if its a ground - use an ohmeter between it and a known ground - on 1x you should see vitually 0 ohms - well less than 1 ohm.

On a Porsche its actually a pretty safe bet to assume a solid brown wire that is in a factory loom is a ground - watch for add on wiring (all bets off) or brown wires with stripes... Porsche is more consistent with this wiring covention than anything else... however never hurts to verify as above.

Alan

 

Got in to take a better look at the wire hanging in the middle of the driver's footwell, and found that it's actually originating from the ground point by the steering column. Doh, should have copped that first time.

So, it is a ground, but where is this supposed to be connected to? The wires at the centre console disappear so finding it hard to track those down.

I think I'll take the dash apart and see what I can find there...