Car has no ignition power or dash lights.

It's an 87 with a 16 valve and cis. She I turn the key nothing happens. Literally. No dash lights no fuel pump no starter clickng. I've checked the battery with digital charger and tried the jump the car. Banged on the new starter, swapped ecus, checked fuses, replaced a cracked ignition switch, and now I'm stuck. What could cause no power what so ever.

 

power to the fusebox?

 

I mean it's gotta be something like that. Bad ground or frayed wire.

Does anyone know if there is a better wiring solution maybe from another year to replace this one with??

 

Bump for anything

 

You said new starter, did your problems start after fitting it?

If so is there an earth attached to it?

 

Nope nothing. No power at all.

 

When my 1990 PB did this a couple of weeks ago it was the ignition switch. One of the copper contacts inside had bent. It turns out that this was because it had overheated due to a short caused by worn insulation in one of the cables in the bundle above the speedo cable.

I fixed the ignition switch without knowing the cause, and soon after the short happened again, damaging about 15 cables above the speedo cable. All these cables needed repairing, and also melted a hole in the brake servo vacuum pipe!

All fixed now.

To get the warning lights back on and fuel pump running I had to get to the back of the ignition switch and bridge the big red wire and smaller black one.

Does your fuel pump run when you switch on?

h8v.

 

Nope. Literally nothing happening. So if I bridge the ignition red to red and black to black it should work if it's the ignition switch or key ignition. Even tho it's a new switch but maybe there's a short.

 

Get a multimeter and check drop the fusebox see if your getting power to it!

 

OK then, how about running a lead directly from the battery to the big red cable on the ignition switch, then turning on the ignition and seeing if that gets some systems going.

Given that you seem to have nothing working, it's got to be something very early on in the system. Once you find it, everything will be fixed.

Perhaps the battery earths could be one place to look.

If you don't have a meter, then a 12 volt bulb on a couple of pieces of wire could be a help to finding where, if anywhere, you have some power!

I know it can be very frustrating, but my experience is that it is all too obvious when you do find the fault.

h8v.

 

Is it alarmed. I had to remove mine to get my ignition back working.

 

Great info thank you!! I will post up results on Sunday!

As far as alarm, there isn't one. People can even open the doors normally lol.

 

So here's my findings. Sorry I took so long. I ran into problems at work.



First image I found 12.33v going to and from two of the harnesses. The blue harness had 12v when I opened it up and tested from the inside. Didn't have anything leaving the harness. However there was 12v going to the relay box via thick red wire.


This is the plug for the ignition switch. 12v going to the red wire.
If I were to bridge the red arrow(red wire) and yellow arrow (black/red) wire would that act as though I turned the key?



Lastly here's the fuse box. Red wires test at 12v. I placed the neg wire from my multimeter on the white wire and pos on the red and it read 12v. Does that mean the ground is good?



Any thoughts....

 

Never seen a fusebox like that before?

 

It's a US made golf gt.

 

Ahh that would be why , in your first picture underneath the brake pedal theres a random red wire which looks like it goes back up to the steering column area? It doesnt look connected fusebox end?

edit: could be clutch pedal lol

 

Haha yea clutch pedal. That's my fog light wires that ran to the center console piece.

Is there a list of locations for ground wires so that I know I'm not missing any

 

So I. Found three different grounds in the bay. Maybe I'm missing some.

1 battery to the Trans support

2 firewall to the area above the distributor

3 battery to the drivers side fender

4 passengers side fender area to the rear block.

Am I missing any?