German AWD

[kevin286]

Is that mocronic unit bettrr?

They're both motronic, the green label is 1.1 and the silver label (..173) is 1.3
With motronic 1.3 you get some basic system check, by doing a combination of ignition on and pedal stomping, then it will flash lights indicating certain faults. stomp test Some people also claim better response due to slightly different mapping in the 173 vs 153. This may be a placebo effect though dunno.

I wonder, does VW stuff use the motronic DMEs?

[MT-Getto]

^^^
Thats cool stuff there. There are supposedly jumpers to get flash codes on the pre obd2 vw stuff, but I've never found the connectors. I like that "Stomp Test". Simple.

[kevin286]

When driving the car around the block cycling the power steering fluid, it was pretty evident that it was mis-aligned. The left wheel wanted to push the front end to the right and the right to the left. Kinda got sketchy when one wheel had less traction than the other

I needed to get the alignment close enough to drive around.
First, I got both wheels set from center as even as I could. I measured off the inner end of the outer tie rod to the start of the inner tie rod threads.
Left

Right

Painted a line around the wheel, Just holding the can in one spot while a helper spun the wheel.

Wait till the paint dried, the scribed a line in the white paint. This gives a nice fine line to measure off of. Same deal, hold the sharp point in one spot while someone spins the wheel

Next measure the front and rear. Need to make sure you measure at the same height on the wheel, So I measured off jackstands.

Adjust as needed, then measure both the exposed thread and also wheel front and back again. Repeat

When I was done, the rear of the tire measured 1/8" wider in the back then the front. I admit I haven't done the math to figure out what this is in degrees yet. Drives straight though. Will do a proper alignment after I replace the rear control arm and subframe bushings.

Next my instrument cluster had some burnt out bulbs and my wheel was 80 or so degrees off from straight so.. Must remove the steering wheel, just one nut, no big deal.


A friend of mine gave me this cool little screwdriver which is just tits for getting at the instrument cluster surround screws.

Put a meter on all the bulbs and replaced the burnt out ones. Standard 1/4 twist stuff here

Reassemble, this time with the steering wheel straight. One of the reasons I chose the head unit I did is because you can set the hue of the buttons and display. Matching dash lights; OEM look FTW.


Next up, the OBC button lights. (Below the temperature display the buttons are supposed to be backlit as well)

[YASHA7FOLD]

Job well done. I had a heck of a time getting the alignment close on the beetle when I put the new beam in. So I commend you sir.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kevin286]

Started on fixing the OBC (On Board Computer) backlights.
Standard HVAC panel removing here. PITA

Once you have the panel loose, you can pull on it to show where the screws are on the OBC, then reach around from the glovebox area and get at them with a little philips

Now that you can access the OBC, the clock light bar is easy to remove; it just slides out as a little module


The button lightbulb is more difficult because it's recessed into the OBC.

On the plus side, it is just a standard instrument cluster bulb

The light bar has two bulbs wired in series. I guess that'll be 6volt each then


I found this website that sells automotive replacements in the LED variety. Measured up the existing to make sure they'd fit, and they will. (might order some to keep as replacements for the future)

While I was all up in the dash's junks, thought I'd fix my sub level indicator LED. It's a tricolor green normally. Green does not match the dash lights color which are all red/orange. As a quick fix, I just swapped the leads, so it's normally red now, and green will be the 'alert' state.


Off to radioshack to see if I can come up with some 6vdc bulbs

[YASHA7FOLD]

Very ambitious.

[Ramrod]

I'm sure glad you're using your powers for good. My EE201 class didn't cover this stuff.

[kevin286]

Picked up some bulbs from RadioShack. These are 6VOLT not 12 because they're wired in series not parallel. Bought all two they had so don't go back for more

Use solder sucker to remove the old bulbs. You could do this with a manual sucker, or even solder wick, but hey, if you've got the tools use em.

Old vs New

Strip leads and cut to length

Oops, I used the wrong gauge on the stripper and cut it a little short

It's okay; I got them in and soldered no problem.

Hooked it up to 12vdc on the bench to test it and... oh no; one's less bright then the other. I measured the resistance of the bulbs and found one was 2Ohms different. Doh, need more quality control on these suckers. This meant that I was getting 4vdc to one bulb and 6 to the other.

Did the calculations for resistors addition but in trying it didn't seem to work out right. So I just did the old trial and error thing and found that 820 Ohms was the ticket. Soldered that junks in place.

And now, when hooked up both bulbs are even.

[padroB5]

i have one question for you.... do you go crossed eyed so bad you get head acks lol. you are very good with that soddering gun!

[kevin286]

i have one question for you.... do you go crossed eyed so bad you get head acks lol. you are very good with that soddering gun!

It's no big deal on big stuff like this. Doing little surface mount parts where you have to wear the magnifying goggles... That's a different story.
It's all about using the right tool for the job in electronics I think. Most of the time I don't even try at home, I'll drive into work to use my bench there rather the frustrate myself with the stuff I have at the house.