Luis de Prat

Hi Keith,

I just got back from a shop that does electrical work and something is definitely wrong with my wiring. They added some wires to the headlight harness as a temporary solution since I'll be out driving all day tomorrow with some friends.

I really appreciate your response, but let me give some more background info that may help me interpret your advice better. Last summer the car began running erratically and it spent several weeks at a shop which eventually found the DME to be malfunctioning. However, who knows how many electrical parts they took apart to diagnose the bad DME.

When I got the car back, the convertible top mechanism wasn't working and the central locking system was dead. Since I have 2 of these cars, I started to swap relays between the two and discovered that they had mistakenly switched two identical relays in the fuse box that were killing the top mechanism and central locking.

At any rate, I am now suspecting they pulled the fuse box panel out when they were diagnosing the bad DME. Since I've never taken it apart I'm not sure what's inside but is it possible that they swapped some connectors under the panel by mistake?

Thanks again!

VWaddict

Wow!!!

Sounds like it may not be a 'single-mode' failure, then. -More likely some detective work is needed... for that I REALLY like to use a 'fox and hound' tracer...

Either way, there's no relays or over-complexity in the path, so it SHOULD be possible to verify wiring along the intended path.

By the way, if you don't have the schematic, SAVE that link to your hard drive (all 22Megs of it!) because it won't ALWAYS be there...

Good luck with it... let me know if you want to get 'elbows-deep' in it any time in the future.

Keith

Luis de Prat

You guys were right! The wires were broken, but the break was hidden by a factory wire tie that held the wires to the headlight frame.

I pulled the wire up and noticed it bent very easily right at the wire tie. Since the headlight pigtail plugs into the wiring harness, I had no choice but to cut through the cracked factory harness and splice.

I used some tiny brass connectors to splice the 3 wires and put plastic shields over them to prevent shorting. Reused as much of the original hose to cover up the splicing, and sealed it with some electrical tape.

Sure enough, the headlights are operative again, with normal low beam/high beam changeover, and the high beam indicator light is now off unless I pull back on the steering column stalk or push it forward.

Thanks for helping me out!

VWaddict

Great news!

Now... make yourself (or buy...) an 'upgrade' headlight harness: -one with relays and direct feeds from the battery. -If your wiring is old enough to become brittle and break, it usually means that you have some oxygen ingress through the (usually PVC) insulation, which means two things:

1/ This might happen again,

2/ the wire probably has a higher resistance, meaning that you're losing some power to the bulbs.

...and anyway... replacement harnesses like the "Iceshark" version improve things anyway... In your case it might also improve reliability. -Sounds like the people who did the original 'electrical work' might have handled things a little roughly, and caused this break by flexing the wires around the wire tie.

Keith