glowplug relay setup?

[davechallis]

hey guys.

ive got a mk2 golf (ex 16v) running an AAZ engine. ive just bought some nice mk2 golf GTD clocks and I would like the glow plugs to work as they should when the ignition is turned on also for the amber light to come on too. what are you guys doing about this? is there a 5 second relay available.?? currently on a push button through a standard manual relay which I don't like.

cheers

[TimpanogosSlim]

Yes and no.

The standard setup is to use a glow plug relay. Unfortunately they don't really fit in a commodity relay socket. Huge tabs.

I feel like somewhere in a junk yard there's a timed relay in a car somewhere that is probably useful for a ton of tasks, but i haven't been able to determine what that is.

In the field of industrial control there are a lot of industrial grade timer relays. The real ones are expensive, the chinese knockoffs are cheap and a bit sketchy and probably a bad idea.

And then there's the gray area of the DIY electronic modules you can get from scads of chinese vendors on ebay.

This, for example, is a circuit found in every electronics textbook printed in the last 40 years:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/281577362667

It won't power your glow plug circuit directly, but it'll power a relay that will. Sometimes you get a dud from these guys, so at $3, buy two.

It's not waterproof and will need to be secured somewhere. Glue a chunk of cardboard to the back side and zip tie it to something behind the dash maybe.

There are a ton of products like that. search for "12v timer relay".

If it says "Omron" on it, comes from the far east, and costs less than $50, it's fake, and the above totally honest circuit is probably a safer bet.

[Toby]

OR you could just go to the JY and find a Rabbit diesel. Most of theses had the GP relay that was hung off the side of the Mk1 fuse block with little plastic tabs. Put a new GP relay in it and wire it up.

Beware that there were fast and slow GP relay systems. Fast glow GPs and slow glow controller usually means popped GPs. The slow glows sucked and are hard to find anymore, thankfully.

[srgtlord]

The quickest method for setting up the glowplug relay would be to locate some generic spade connectors and mount the relay outside of the fuse box.  If you want to get really creative I believe the fuel pump relay socket on the MK2 can physically accommodate the glowplug relay but it lacks the proper spade connectors. *note the generic spade connectors are too large to fit inside the fuel pump relay socket*

 As for powering the light in the instrument cluster, you will have to look at the wiring schematics for your vehicle to determine what wire you need to splice into on the cluster connector.  On my vehicle it was fairly easy as the CE1 cluster electrical traces are large and easily followed. In my case I determined the oxygen sensor warning light wire on the cluster was what I needed to splice into to get the glowplug light working.  If you are in a hurry it will  be much quicker to place an LED somewhere else in the dashboard and wire it up.

In order to get a feel of how the glowplug relay operates I suggest  building a test bench.  I built a glowplug relay test bench using an old electronics kit and a bit of help from this website http://www.4crawler.com/Diesel/GlowPlug.shtml

[shelbot]

Not sure if this will help but it will be my route.


http://vincewaldon.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=30&Itemid=28

[bajacalal]

Here's what I did:
http://www.vwdiesel.net/forum/index.php/topic,35363.msg334401.html