Grounding Kit

[sierra055]

Hi all,
after an interesting night of my car not starting, I tracked it down to a dodgy earth point, which I have now fixed.

Just wondering if anyone knows if there is a Grounding kit available for mk4's?

This made a big difference on my old car and would certainly stop last night's drama from happening again.

[dubbed]

Hey mate, where is the grounding point? Was it turning over and not starting?

[sierra055]

Basically the car had power, lights, stereo etc. But when you turned the key... dead. Nothing. All power gone. Stereo off, clock and ODO gone. After a few minutes, you could hear the door locks engaging and disengaging, fuel pump priming and the power would come back.

Checked power across the battery and had a solid 12+v and the terminals were tight.

I threw the vag-com and notebook at it and interestingly it showed low power to terminal 30 (which I later found out is the starter motor) and that the immobilizer had been triggered. So I thought, ahhh... key must be stuffed and the car is locking everything out. So went and got spare key, but no joy.

I then put the multimeter on the battery earth and starter motor + and yep, 12v no probs. Got girlfriend to start car with the multimeter across it, and you could hear a pop and power dropped. I tested it by putting a jumper lead from the negative on the battery to the engine block, and she fired right up.

I think there's 2 ground points, one on the chassis under the battery and another at the gearbox.

Bit of good news today tho... finally my SMIC has arrived but i'll save that for another time hehe

[qsilverza]

There is lots of stuff about grounding kits on vwvortex. At least one member with a 4motion has a grounding kit on his 4motion.(Mr Charizma) Fuzion might have something spare, or you could do your own.

[sierra055]

Yeah, I did read some of the posts on Vortex, but I was kind of hoping there was a kit available that had a central distribution point, rather than just wires linking ground points.

Think I might make some up as I haven't been able to find anything other than bright green and purple coloured universal ones .

[MRJZ]

Though I have an 8 point grounding kit in my car that I made, I would recommend checking the 2/3 grounds under your battery in general.

It is 1 of the most common issues with MK4's

[sierra055]

Yeah, that was the problem I had the other night, the chassis ground under the battery tray.

I figure that this will at least stop it from happening again, but in my last car there was definitely an improvement in both fuel efficiency and the electric system too.

[Manaz]

I had a custom-built grounding kit put into my MY02 Liberty by FHRX Studios, and am seriously considering having them do the same for my 2003 Bora V6 4Motion (along with a good battery, probably another Optima Yellow Top).

Everything was red on the Liberty, I'll be going for a more stealth (and colour-correct) black install this time.

http://www.fhrxstudios.com/

[Mr ©harisma]

Yeah Marty put one on my car. Basically it's a 0ga cable to a plate. Their is then 5x 4ga cables running around important parts of the engine bay. One of those is to the starter motor.

That and an Optima D34m ( has a second set of terminals over the Yellow top D34 so if you need to jump start you don't attack your gold terminals!! ) stopped any dimming lights and has power on tap all the time. Put on some picces for you.

[Manaz]

Does the stock battery cover not fit over an Optima D34/D34m, or have you removed it for photographic purposes?