VW Golf Mk2 Owners Club

Help! Complete electrical failure

April 06, 2021, 11:39:10 AM

Good morning!

Well it was!
I have a 91 GTI 8v that I was working on this morning which unlocked & started as normal, then without any notice the car cut out and lost all power to everything, including radio which was on at the time.
Now I have nothing on the key, yet there is still 13.5v in the battery.

So I am lost at the moment,it does have a toad alarm/immobilizer fitted, but that's not working either

Cheers in advance for any help.

Andy

Re: Help! Complete electrical failure

Reply #1 – April 06, 2021, 02:03:16 PM

Check your earths,
Do you get any power anywhere? Dash lights etc
Does the car crank.

Re: Help! Complete electrical failure

Reply #2 – April 06, 2021, 02:31:18 PM

Hi,

Thanks for the reply,

There was no power at all, no cranking,no lights on dash, no radio, nothing at all.

Funnily enough I dropped the fusebox out to see if there was anything obvious in the back, but nothing. Went in for a cup of tea, sent message above, an hour passed & noticed that the parking light had come on, power back on!!!?!
Went outside the car started almost first time & everything works apart from the front left indicator & left side repeater.

Peculiar??

Cheers

Andy

Re: Help! Complete electrical failure

Reply #3 – April 07, 2021, 07:56:15 AM

Double check all your earths, the one just behind the battery and especially the one on the side of the gearbox.
If that works loose, you can blow up your ecu!

Re: Help! Complete electrical failure

Reply #4 – April 13, 2021, 08:24:10 PM

Thanks Monkey & Sly-gti

I threw in the towel & went to the scrappys & found a mk 3.5 cabrio with a CE2 fuse box that was clean & swapped it out as I found my fuse box was corroded at each end for the princely sum of £20 so i shoved as many fuses & relays as I could fit (& a few more!!).

So it has fixed my earlier problems (after cleaning all the earth points I could find), but then highlighted my wiper problem.  Which was why when I bought the car there was a spare set of stalks, wipers fixed after change of stalks, plus a 99 relay fitted for that special touch!! haha.

Thanks for your help

Andy