CE1 Possible Shorted Fuse Block?

Hello everyone,

I am a new member here from the United States!

I've got a pretty unique car, a B2 Passat/Santana/quantum with CIS basic (I believe, no brain on the distributor) and the 2.2 Audi "WE" Inline five pot. 84,000 original miles!

Right now, I've got a major issue I'm trying to sort out. The car is a 1983 with a similar fuse block to later MK1 and MK2 Golf/Jetta with CIS.. It has blade fuses and 12 relay sockets. A couple auxiliary relays on top.

Last week, the day after I bought this well cared for and sorted car, I believe it popped the fuel pump relay. The car shut down and would not restart. I was able to jump the socket to get the car home no issue.

However, ever since, the load reduction relay (#17 in slot 8) is screaming/buzzing whenever load is applied via wipers, blower motor, rear defrost or power windows, and none of those functions actually work due to this.

Alongside this, the central locking and flashers/signals have quit as well, only illuminating the dash light solid with no click from the relay.

Now, I really dug into the wiring diagrams I could find via a2resource and cabby-info, and decided to try a fused jumper across the load reduction relay large main terminals. This allowed two conditions. With key/car on, and relay jumper in place, power options such as wipers, defrost, and windows and blower all worked just fine. With jumper out and relay socket empty, the signals and flashers as well as the central locking will work just fine, but no heavy power options as listed just before.

Seems to be related to the other terminals on the load reduction relay, the small ones.

Is my fuse block internally shorted? Did something else fry?

The engine runs fine, the gauges all work appropriately (I believe anyways) the radio is functioning, the horn works, the lights work.

Every relay and fuse has been checked and replaced for giggles.

No change.

I'm lost! Need some help.

Thank you,

~Cody

Obviously it could be a few things, but if it's the same as the golf the first thing I'd check is power and ground to the control side of the load reduction relay. Pin 1 ground, pin 4 live with ignition turned on. Test pin 4 with a test light or bulb to a known good ground. The light should be nice and bright. Test pin 1 with light from battery positive. From the symptoms, it sounds like a bad ground to pin 1(actually the whole fusebox). The fusebox gets its ground from d22, white plug on back of fusebox, pin 22. The brown wire from pin 22 should be grounded. It usually goes to a block of grounds that's connected to the main ground from the battery. I suspect the relay at the moment is trying to get a ground through the other relays. Take a photo of the layout and remove all relays except the load reduction. I suspect it will not work at all with them removed.

Steve1973 said

Obviously it could be a few things, but if it's the same as the golf the first thing I'd check is power and ground to the control side of the load reduction relay. Pin 1 ground, pin 4 live with ignition turned on. Test pin 4 with a test light or bulb to a known good ground. The light should be nice and bright. Test pin 1 with light from battery positive. From the symptoms, it sounds like a bad ground to pin 1(actually the whole fusebox). The fusebox gets its ground from d22, white plug on back of fusebox, pin 22. The brown wire from pin 22 should be grounded. It usually goes to a block of grounds that's connected to the main ground from the battery. I suspect the relay at the moment is trying to get a ground through the other relays. Take a photo of the layout and remove all relays except the load reduction. I suspect it will not work at all with them removed.

Most definitely I will give this a try.

Did the pictures not post with the original post?
It's laid out just like a MK1.

Yea the pictures posted lol. I meant for your own reference so you would know where to put the relays back. Then I realised there was a reference picture right in the post 🤣

Is this of any help

The "X" Circuit from the Ignition Switch. | VW Vortex - Volkswagen Forum

jakethepeg007 said

Is this of any help

The "X" Circuit from the Ignition Switch. | VW Vortex - Volkswagen Forum

This is a big help to understand it! Thank you. I have some things to try here.

jakethepeg007 So I've had just enough time to replace the ignition switch, as it was the original in the car and it was indeed cracked. However, it has not fixed my issue yet. It seemed like the likely culprit! I think I'm going to be going down the road of the fuse block/grounds next.

I'd go round all of the car earths, and make sure they are all good and clean, remove the coloured multi plugs from the back of the fuse boards and check all the pins for burning or corrosion.
If nothing is obvious I'd power up to get the load reduction relay noisy and start pulling a single fuse at a time to identify if there is a component failed or direct you to the circuit causing the problem