my 86 pirelli 4 door gas to diesel build

[lovinthedeez]

so after I got the motor running, I ran into serious electrical problems resulting from the po(s) bad attempt at wiring.  luckily i got a smoking deal on all of the harnesses for an 86 diesel jetta for 45 bucks shipped to my door(thanks bunnylove).  just got the harnesses today, and they look great; 99.9 percent uncut .  time for a date or two with my bentley.  


been busy lately putting a motor on my daily, runs like a banshee on crack and sounds like an rm80


don't think its gonna rain much until october, so this should be fun
  

[lovinthedeez]

started the harness swapping.  first one to do was the rear harness, since it seemed like the most pita to do.  wasn't too bad since its pretty much a plug and play operation.  got my fuel guage working again, just in time for a three hour drive into the middle of nowhere oregon coast for my friends wedding.  hope to get a couple of dash harnesses swapped out today.  I still have a short somewhere in my brake circuit, and my headlight circuit.  ughhhh.....electrical.....all in time.

[lovinthedeez]

so i took my diesel conversion on its first real road test....a paved(if you can call it that) connecting road forty five miles long through oregons roughest stuff.  the road is closed in the winter....so you can only imagine.  I would love to organize a gtg drive on this stretch, but  i guess it would be hard as it's not for the faint at heart or the too low group.  went for a friends wedding in agness, oregon.  the pics aren't meant to be artsy fartsy; just glad that she held up on some of oregons toughest terrain.  rolled through the biscuit fire area from 2002; one of oregons worst wildfires in history (500,000+ acres).  It burned hot, but not completely.  but here it is......45 miles of singletrack through oregons finest.










sometimes, the road was just gone


biscuit fire damage...it burned so hot.....perfectly healthy trees only fifty yards either way


the town welcome sign.....man i love oregon


300 miles through some of oregons toughest terrain.....got roughly 48 mpg    

[8v-of-fury]

DUDE! that looks like a BEAUTY cruising road!

If i lived in Oregon i would cruise it with you  Glad to hear you got 48mpg!

Looooooooookinggggg gooooooodddd

[katakura silk]

Great build!
My family and I are moving to Oregon next May. We were just out there for vacation last month. I really dont know if my little 1.5 diesel can handle. Any pointers or am I just over reacting. We have a auto trans rental car and it was  push to the max trying to make it up to the Column is astoria...

[lovinthedeez]

i live in southwestern oregon.  very rugged down here.  the highest point on I-5 separates oregon and california.  siskiyou pass at 4000 something feet.  it gets pretty burly in the wintertime.  whatever ridge I went over yesterday was much burlier than even that, and my 1.6 na never even skipped a beat, and its got about 200K on it.  bring it out here, and enjoy the sweet oregon life.  just be ready for the tweakers

[lovinthedeez]

so I have three of the harnesses swapped in now.  The rear harness and the two dash harnesses are now in, and that seemed to cure the shorting problem I was having with the brake lights.  Now I have another issue.  everything seems to work okay except when I have the key on, lights on.  when i signal left or right, the rear lights and the license plate lights go off like the emergency flasher is on.  i think its a grounding issue.  now I have to go through the wiring again.  anyone have any pointers to which grounds might be causing this whole headache.  I think I'm just going to have to tear the dash apart again, open up the bentley, and figure out which ground didn't get hooked back up when I swapped the harnesses out. 

[madmedix]

Hope I'm not going over old ground for you, by both my girls have huge braided copper grounding straps on the engine, starter and the tranny to the firewall; The starter strap was an obvious addition; not sure about the block and tranny one: my old 92 Golf NA had them too. Road salt is darn hard on them though, and they really need replacing. At the firewall mount, there is what looks to be a 10-guage black wire on the same eyelet that runs into the cab via the drain tray access on the driver's side. This is I re-route I did, as I removed one when I changed out the power rack for the manual one. I had to cut it to remove the bellows covering the steering knuckle.
Point is: there is a lot of PO grounding issues dealt with on both of these cars. I'm starting to think just running  a 10 guage front to back for future convenience is looking damn good right about now.

Cheers,
Andy

[lovinthedeez]

hey thanks for the info.  i ran a wire real quick from the negative terminal to the ground screw in the trunk for the rear harness, and yeah, problem solved; mostly.  still have no brake lights, but I bet once I put more grounds to the body in today or tomorrow, it will fix the problem.  i'm pretty sure that the brake switch on the pedal is good, because I was getting a nasty short to the turn signals whenever i hit the brakes before.  at least I have the turn signals under control now with the headlights on.  my car is now officially no longer afraid of the dark.  all I have left to figure out is these darn brake lights.  looks like its voltmeter time.

[lovinthedeez]

and i fixed my brake lights, too.  turned out it was just a broken wire.  replaced it with the wire from the harness i removed.  Its kinda nice having two harnesses.  got the same red black wire that was supposed to be there.  car is now fully functional, with a few bells and whistles to be wrapped up.  still have to put in the engine harnesses, but there is no rush on that, as not much will change.

[lovinthedeez]

got so much "buttoning up" work done on this, its silly. still need to get the lower steering column cover on well, but whatever.  cleaned her up a little bit, and doesn't have in it anymore any car pieces or anything.  freshly cleaned, hastily, and took a few pics.  put on the wheel a few days ago.   glad I didn't screw up the car too bad during the swap.  the wiring went from rats nest to pretty much og.  only a have two harnesses left to go. 

couple of side shots



interior shots





she had some junk in her trunk.  there were two of these rockford HE's in the back in some giant
ass box.  sold one for $$$$$, and kept just one. 



hard to tell how much has bent spent on this really.  all in all, i would say less than a grand still....

[lovinthedeez]

playing with it tonight, still need a heater switch, and make my cold start cable stay in place at the dash so it will work right.  what piece am i missing.  is it just a c-clip that hooks it to the dash or what?

[lovinthedeez]

well, I found the heater switch still attached to the dash harness that I pulled out.   .  the set of harnesses i bought didn't have the switch or the socket, so that turned out nice.  I even found the little key thing that makes it switch speeds .  wired it up real quick, and I have a heater and defrost once again.  sure glad its 101 degrees outside right now . figured out that I need to get a nut to hold the cold start into place.  I think I need to reroute the cable, because I can't get the threads past the dash where the locknut will go.  I only need another inch or so, shouldn't be too much of a biggie.  the list keeps getting shorter and shorter.  boy, there were a lot of hacks to fix with this thing

reverse lights.....just need to get a new switch
speedo cable.....just gotta order it
proper ce1 diesel cluster....anyone got one??

and I think thats it really.  I'm kinda proud of myself at having done the swap as properly as I have.  there really isn't much hackage anymore compared to when I started.  its still got a long ways to go, but at least i have the po's work fixed. 

[8v-of-fury]

Don't you hate PO'S work!? I was lucky on my jetta.. Completely un-molested. My 67 mercury on the other hand.. omfg.. Wanted to burn it down because of the mess it was in.... lol

GREAT JOB DUDE

[lovinthedeez]

i totally hear ya on that one.  this car; before the swap, caused so much stress with me/my lady/me and my lady/my baby.  i wanted to push this thing off a cliff after setting it on fire sooooooo many times.  went from a bad car buy deal, to a big letdown gasser head rebuild, to this; six months later.  but the wrenching is over (for now ), and now it's just down to making it nicer for the fam.  now I need to get back to work on the p slots.