924Board.org

[Neil924]

1. When you turn on your lights does the temp/ fuel/ oil/ voltage guages flicker slightly?

2. When does your fan come on? The first line, second, third?

3. Where does your oil guage needle rest when the car is off AND where is it while your accessory is on but not the car?

4. Does your car put out much heat under the hood after it has been idleing for about 30 minutes?

5. In the picture below does that hose get very hot to touch after 30 minutes of idleing?



Thanks.
Give me a week and I'll take new pictures of my car.

[gohim]

#1 Looks like your car is an early 77 with dual ballast resistors. Those cars were inadequately grounded, and yes, the lights will momentarily flicker under a high load like when you flip your headlights on.

You need to add a heavy (battery cable ground thickness) wire between the battery and chassis, the battery and the engine, and the engine and the chassis.

#2 Where your coolant temperature gauge indicates when the cooling fans kick in depends on which thermofan switch you have installed on the radiator. The cooling fans may kick on at the first hash mark from the left, at the middle line, or on the last line before the red zone.

#3 The oil pressure gauge rests at zero in my cars unless the engine is running.

#4 No, my car does not dump out tons of heat from the engine compartment if it is idling from cold and the hood is up after 30 minutes. Of course if the cooling fans kick on you can feel more heated air coming out. If you are getting tons of heat from over the exhaust manifold right side of engine compartment) a few miutes after the engine is started, then you could have a cracked exhaust manifold (early exhaust manifolds are known for this problem). They crack starting on the bottom side, and you will not be able to see the cracks unless you lift the car and look up at the bottom of the exhaust manifold.

#5 Yes, it is normal for that hose to get warm/hot. It is a coolant return line from the radiator.

[Neil924]

Thanks gohim I appreciate your help.

[Neil924]

[gohim]

With bad grounding the lights will definitely flicker, and they very well may dim momentarily.

I remember that my coolant termperature gauge would read one way with the lights on, and differently with the lights off, so having the lights on will definitely affect the gauges on an early car without additional electrical grounding.

If you are asking if the first position of the headlight switch (and you are not refering to the turnsignal switch) will turn on the front, rear and sider markers, while raising the headlights without turning the headlights on, the answer is yes.

To me, "driving lights" are high powered additional lights installed on the front of the car for additional front distance vision. They are placed on the front of the car, nad have a spot type focusing lense. Driving lights are not the front, rear, and sidemarker lights commonly referred to by most as "running lights" or "parking lights" in some places.

Moving the headlight switch to the second position should keep the running lights on, and also turn on the headlights.

[Smoothie]

The sequence of events with my '82's headlights is slightly different. One click on and I get dash and running lights with no headlight pop-up. Second click on, pops the headlights and turns them on. From there, one click back turns the headlights off, but leaves them up, then the second click back lowers the headlights and shuts off all the others.
On one click on (dash and running lights only), the oil pressure gauge needle drops slightly (by approx. 1/4 bar) and the fuel level gauge rises slightly - and both maintain these relative altered positions until the lights are switched off again. There's no noticable additional change to the gauge readings when the headlights or high-beams are switched on.
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"..it's made in Germany. You know the Germans always make good stuff."


'82 924T, US version, dark green metallic, 5 speed Audi 016G gearbox

[Gram]

Ditto mine exactly Smoothie, with one exception. My gas gauge never moves with operation of the light switch, but my voltmeter dips slightly in tune with the oil pressure gauge. Maybe I'll try another earth lead run to those gauges one day..
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'82 924 NA Euro (hers)
'98 Audi A4 TDI (ours)