Tag Archive for: wiring

fix headlight wiring

How To Replace Headlight Wiring

When we found the headlight wiring issue on my Passat, I was not surprised. VW has had the reputation for wiring issues and electrical problems for many years. In this video I show you have to remove a Passat headlight, and replace the wiring harness for the bulbs. You can also use this video as a guide if you want to repair the headlight harness. In my case ALL the wires were damaged, and replacement made for a better overall repair. Remember that step one of this job is to remove the bumper cover. Here is “How to Remove and Install Passat Bumper Cover” video I did.

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Damaged Vw threads

Shop Shots Volume 74 Insider Pictures of Automotive Service

Happy Thursday boys and girls. I can’t believe that today is the last day of July. It is crazy when you realize how fast the year has gone by. Okay, enough reminiscing, it is time for Shop Shots!

VW engine failureThis may not look like something out of the ordinary, but it is. This engine was delivered to us a few days ago. When they took it off the truck I was shocked. Shocked because I had no idea what the heck type of engine it was. I have seen plenty of VW engines, and this didn’t look anything like that. That is because it is NOT a VW engine. It is for a dang Routan.

I got some of the story on why we are replacing a Routan engine with a junkyard engine. It seems that a customer drove through water high enough to pull water into the engine. I don’t know why people do that. It should be interesting to see this Routan get an engine replacement. I will keep everyone updated when the repair is done. Maybe there will be some cool pictures of the damage.

Volkswagen wiring problem engineThis is a much less rare thing. You are looking at a B7 Passat VR6. This car had some type fault for a Knock sensor. There is a Tech Tip, or a TSB for this issue. The repair is replacing the engine room harness. There are probably about 30 connectors on that harness. Replacing an engine harness can be a big task depending on the engine. I talked to the tech working on this car, he said it was one of the easier ones.

Damaged Vw threadsThis last one is a good one. This is a steering knuckle from a Touareg. The holes are where the brake caliper bolts on. One of the techs in the shop was replacing the brakes on this Touareg. When he put the bolts back in, the threads got damaged. We retapped the hole, and cleaned up the bolts. Even after that the job went sideways and ruined the treads.

Replacing the knuckle is expensive, and the machine shop didn’t have a heli-coil that size. The solution for this comes in the form of a Time Sert. These things are amazing. You basically drill a bigger hole, and thread a sleeve into the hole. The picture on the left is the repaired bolt hole, the one on the right is the good one. It is a great solution for a job that goes bad.

That does it for another volume of Shop Shots. As always I hope you have enjoyed the pictures and little stories behind them.

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Shop Shots loose Bolt VW

Shop Shots Volume 38 Insider Pictures of Automotive Service

Hi everyone. It’s Wednesday so we are rocking and rolling on some Shop Shots. I am also running a little behind to day. I have spent the day hanging a TV over our fireplace. Something that should be fairly simple, but running the wires was kind of a pain. All right, let’s dive in to this weeks automotive pictures.

This one comes from a fellow VW tech. I don’t recall what car it came from. This is a picture of a bolt jammed into an intake valve. If you think that it looks really clean you would be right. This car only had about 150 miles on it. I didn’t get the entire story on how this came about. But really, a freaking bolt laying in the engine? How does that even happen?

This pictures might be a little tricky to see. This car came in for an intermittent no start. The first time around we put a battery in the car. At that time it would start every time. This time it got towed in and would not start. Not only would it not start, but it was totally dead. We even tried t jump start it, and it was still dead.

The mechanic working on the car just happened to smack the fuse block. When he did that, the car switched on. We pulled the fuse block out trying to find the the loose connection. It got to the point where we could get the car to switch off, but could not find the wire. Finally I pealed back the tape in the wiring harness. I gave the big red wire a slight tug and pulled this big wire from the loom(focus on the top left of the pic). A few crimps and the car is good to go. We really got lucky finding that issue. It could have been one of those stories that went the wrong way for a long time.

For some reason this week has been full of weird tire issues. This is a bent piece of steal jammed through a tire. I have never seen a metal rod this size stuck in a tire. It was a little bigger around than a Sharpie marker.

We could not tell if the rod was bent before going into the tire, or because it was in the tire. There were not any witness markings on the rim. This is not a tire that we felt comfortable repairing. We just replaced it. It is funny to see a shop full of techs that have lots of years experience stand around and say, “Wow I have never seen that before”.

The other one I posted to the Facebook page yesterday. Swing by and check it out. 😛 That wraps up this weeks volume of Shop Shots. I am thinking of doing something cool for Volume 40. Throw me some ideas. A recap, best of the best, giveaway? What do you guys got? Post it in the comments, and let’s make #40 awesomer than normal.

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More Volkswagen Electrical Problems ~VIDEO~

I sometimes feel like the world is against Volkswagen. People are always saying “I hear VW has tons of electrical problems”. Well, I don’t really agree with that, but I will save how I really feel for another post. This is about a REAL problem I found on a Jetta.

The customer comes in and says “Sometimes my door buttons do not work”. After a conversationwith the customer, I find out that her driver’s door is not working all the time. There are times when we have to extract the right information from a customer.

When I got in the car, I checked the door. Big surprise, everything worked just fine. I pressed every button on the door, they all worked like a charm. I pressed the auto-down button for the window, and opened the door. When the door got about half way open, the window stopped, all the lights went out on the door, and the instrument cluster started beeping funny. Well you can check it out in the video.

Strange isn’t it? It turns out that the ground wire in the boot between the body of the car and the door was broken. It would make contact with the door shut, but open when the door was open. I am really glad I was able to capture it on video. Usually the strange electrical problems are so sporadic, there is no chance of catching it.

So I did a little rapid fire Q&A session. I got some really good feed back. If you have a question or a topic, article that you would like me to talk about, just contact me or post it in the comments section. I kinda liked doing it, so post it up!

Real quick, I just want to take a second and thank each and every one of you that have read my blog, liked the FB page, chatted with me on twitter, posted and comment and so on. It really mean a lot to me. The success of this site is thanks to all of you! Our little community is growing every day, and I am really excited for the things to come. Also, that you to everyone that has shared this site, that is the best way for us to grow! You folks are truly awesome!

This is inside the boot between the door and the body of the car. The wire that is broken is the main ground(negative) wire. With out it, nothing will work.

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