shooftie

Update, 27/02/22

I was working on stripping more stuff from the burned out van today. Took a pic of the big white D connector that contains the failed D15 connection. I think you’ll agree that it’s toast

I’ve written before, 10 years ago it seems, about the failure prone D15 connector on the 86 and newer fuse panel.

https://shufti.blog/2011/11/02/vanagon-d15-connector-issue/

Well, the other week I found another. This time on a van I bought with a friend. Sad story about the van. We bought it as salvage, after it had an engine fire. I’ll post more about that later.

Anyway, I pulled the fuse panel and found the white D connector badly burned and melted at the D15 pin. The pin is undersized for the circuit that it supplies. And what it supplies is the ignition coil and the crank case breather tube heater.

It was an oversight by VW. Other VW vehicles of that era using the same panel moved the circuit to the larger D23 pin. But on the vanagon it wasn’t…. The D23 pin is unused. I’d recommend owners to check that connector and add a pigtail to connect to the free D23 pin. I outlined that in the linked post above.

You can clearly see the burned pin

I guess I ought to show the entire back of panel

I have to emphasize, failure of this connection will stop the engine. It will strand you.

I found another bad connection on this panel, on fuse 14

You can pop the front off the panel and reveal the quite wonderful brass circuitry. There was bent prong in the fuse 14 position. Easy to bend back to shake with needle nosed pliers. I’m guessing some ham fisted person bent that pin, caused bad connection and the resulting heat melted the plastic.

Ok, I’ll post two pics of the burned out van. This was at sellers place on the mainland.