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Golf Cab Mk3 Will Not Fire - Relay 167 Clicking


johnydeath
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Hello knowledgeable ones,

my wifes 2 litre cab has a curious problem - after a long period of reliability the battery has died during the winter period so it was replaced with a nice shiny Bosch silver. This is probably unrelated but its the only thing that has happened, apart from replacing the seats.

The first time the car was taken out it was driven about 10 miles and then parked. After an hour we tried to start it but it would not fire. There is a 3rd party CAT2 imobiliser fitted which negates the cranking - this appears to work as once the key is recognised the cranking is ok, but there is no firing. There is a fast clicking in the fusebox which appears to be relay 167 (white one) and I can see sparking across the contacts as it clicks in and out. I also noticed that if I put some load on the battery by either putting lights on of by putting the fan heater on, the clicking speed increases and also the revcounter moves up to about 900rpm (engine not turning).

I had the car recovered to home, still would not start. Tried again next morning and it started! No clicking relay, all ok. Tried again that night, back to clicking relay and no fire. Battery is fully charged.

Any ideas please. I am guessing bad earth, but what does that relay do? This morning I also noticed a small squeaking around the inlet manifold, possibly in sympathy with the relay but I have not had time to investigate fully. Oh for some light nights!

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Managed to have a look over lunch - further to this, the fuel pump appears to be making a noise in sympathy with the relay. Relay is clicking at about 3 to 6 clicks per sec, its quite fast. I've popped the fusebox out and there is an aftermarket immobiliser (oh no!) with some iffy wiring - well in my opinion. I did manage to get the relay to stop clicking once by wrestling with the box and the car started, but then clicking returned when I turned off and tried to restart. I took the top off the relay and its nice and clean and from the feel of it - it appears to be a pulsing voltage to the relay rather than a duff relay. But perhaps its something to do with the immobiliser? Its a Sigma M4 and an Autowatch 239Ti - hell I don't even know if they are 2 separate alarms or the same badger!

As an aside - there are 2 small silver tin canisters at the top of the fusebox - one yellow top, the other green. The green one (marked 12v 30A - is it purely a fuse??) has a red/yellow wire going to it and also a red wire. This red wire terminates in a free air spade, heaven knows from where it came. Any ideas.

I'm away for a week or so on business, but I'll pick up a Haynes manual at some stage. Any advice or thoughts still gratefully accepted.

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You need a new fuel pump relay! Quite common on the mk3 golfs. The other thing that can cause it is the RPM sensor(that a lot more money than the relay so try the relay first!)(I answered all this before in more detail so just do a seach if you want more info)

The silver things are thermo fuses, they break if there a short circut but will try reconnecting. They do the windows so you dont get your windows stuck down with just a blown fuse! 169144-ok.gif

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Thanks for the tip. A new relay is £6.50 from GSF who are very local to me so that's definately worth a blast. I bet its not the fault as thats just my luck - I'll report back.

I must be having a blonde moment - have searched for "RPM sensor" and "fuel pump relay" along with other strings and can't see anything previous. Would it have expired at all?

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Unpluging immb boxes will wont disarm immbs. I'm going to say you have got a earth problem like you said! Did you do any checks on the earths?

The relay was a cheap simple thing to try where as tracing a earth fault can be trouble.

Good luck mate, Remember thats what it seems like from what you discribe, Might be something total different. smashfreakB.gif

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I know that removing the immbs will not allow the car to start, I was trying to ascertain whether this pulsing signal to the fuel relay was coming from an immb - especially as one of the immbs denies the fuel as part of its security. It appears not, however this still does not mean 100% that the immb is not to blame - only reverse engineering will confirm that I feel.

I have had the relay latch a couple of times while testing - clicking gets faster and then stops after about 5 seconds - I'm then free to start the car and drive away.

I'll look for bad earths, but I am wondering if this pulsing signal is coming from the ECU - anyone know where this beastie lives? Seems a good place to start.

Thanks for the advice so far.

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Am getting nowhere at present - but managed to find the ECU!

Its a Siemens 5WP4 160 and is also marked 037906 025A.

The fault still comes and goes and I aim to try and borrow a replacment ECU to try. Does anyone know whether it has to be replaced with the exact model or will any Mk3 2.0 do? The engine number is of the ADY series, I was expecting a 2E one??

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