Evening all, About to start an ABF swap on a mates Mk3 and had a few queries on the wiring looms. The car the ABF is going into is a late model Mk3 Golf GTI which currently has an 8v and all of its engine bay wiring wrapped into one loom bundle. The ABF loom taken from the donor car is from an early Mk3 GTI and had its engine bay electrics in two separate looms - one engine, one lighting. Once we unwrap the 8v loom will the engine and lighting looms separate nicely or are they all entwined together? Any different layout etc? Just like to know what we're up against before we start pulling things apart lol Cheers in advance.
I did the 1.8->2.0 8v swap so I encountered basically the same problem you guys are having...1.8 AAM engine was having newer instalation all in the same loom, while 2E was with 2 looms, older model. There was no real problem doing the wiring but I needed to splice the 1.8 wiring to elminate lighting loom and air condition - I wanted to keep air condition on that car so it was a little bit of strugle with the wiring it after I eliminated AAM wiring and lighting also...few wires needed to connect separately. If you have Autodata check the ABF ECU pinuot just to make sure everything is where it needs to be connected and there would be no problems.
main difference wiring wise is that the ecu and coil earths splice into the lighting loom on the later cars, on the early cars they run to a ring terminal. if you're putting an early loom into late loom this is no issue though, chop the 8v ecu earths off the main battery earth and use the early loom earth point as per early car. apart from that splitting the 8v ecu wires out is no big deal really, just cut them at strategic locations and pull em out, take the abf wiper wiring out and use the 8v wiring. biggest issue is gettign all the wires to the fusebox, you'll have to de-pin the abf loom fusebox wires and push thru the late grommet, under the grommet is a big chunky piece of foam which will make this a bit tricky. 2 other differences is the early mpg signal wire is on its own plug, later one is in a 3 pin plug with the indicator wires, chop n splice or depin and swap. the other is the diagnostics, early goes straight to the diagnostics jumper above the fusebox, late it runs to the immob box. just plug the early wire straight to the jumper and ignore the immob box wires
Cheers guys, That sounds like more work than I was hoping but not too bad lol I guess a late spec mk3 ABF loom with the lighting loom combined would be plug and play?
yeah that would be an easier option, shouldnt have any trouble swappign yours as the earlier looms are easier to convert to mk1/2! I sdont have any in stock atm but if any come in i'll hit you up. only thign is if you fit late loom with early ecu you need to trim athe locking pegs on ecu connector but you'll see what i mean. but then again if it was me I'd fit in fit late ecu and use vagcom to match the 8v immobiliser to abf ecu dead simples. the early ecus fetch a hefty premium over the late ones as no immobiliser to worry about
Cheers John, I have the early ECU from the donor in my mk2 already lol Might well keep an eye out for a late loom then, will have to see what my mate wants to do. Thanks for your help.
ah well if you fit a later ecu to the mk3 with early abf loom, what you'll have to do is chop the mk3 8v diagnostics plug off and swap to the abf loom wire (or depin) then plug it into the immob box connector as it was with the 8v loom. then as above simple procedure to match the 8v immob box to the abf ecu
