Months of intermittent misfiring. Loads of fettling and money spent. Both fury and dispair. A few days previously I'd even changed the distributor, yet no improvement. Today I drove 200 miles back home from north Wales, and mostly the drive went well. A bit of coughing and spluttering, but nothing drastic and certainly not a worry crossing the old Severn Motorway bridge. Oh dear! Coughing and spluttering got far far worse forcing a motorway stop before the centre of the bridge. Even on a huge starter battery, I couldn't get the old girl to more than idle, and there was an occasional backfire. The Traffic Officers stopped and were very helpful. Half expecting a huge bill for a tow off the motorway to a safe place just a mile away (the Aust Services), I was delighted to hear that it was a "no-charge". Possibly because there was no proper "hard shoulder", being on the bridge? At the services, I opened the engine compartment expecting a long procedure of checking/testing and possibly a long tow home. To save going back and forth to the ignition key, I've a "jump lead" to fit between the battery and the coil directly - effectively a hotwire. Imagine my delight when the engine sprang into life at full power, and my ongoing delight for a perfect final 15 miles home! It now appears that all the hassle of the past few months has been down to an iffy contact on the ignition switch. Now just need to change it. Is THIS what I need, and is it straightforward to fit? ps During the successful (temporary) post-fix drive home, the heavily drained battery was initially charging at over 20 Amps, and after 15 miles only dropped to 11Amps! Now being recharged
Fairly Easy to replace (a bit fiddly) less than 15 quid if it's a plug in one for a later model Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
Have you also checked that you have a good earth strap between the chassis and the gearbox Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk
Thanks, it's a late model (1979) so I'll order one today. Earth strap is fine, the starter motor span perfectly for ages during my panic to get off the Motorway Bridge! There's an extremely outside chance that the problem is a bad live feed from the battery to "everything other than the starter motor". But headlight brightness etc hasn't been effected, so fingers crossed it's a simple switch replacement.
When you take the old one off you might see that it's discoloured. Mine was. Easy fix. It's a real pain when you seem to be chasing your tail trying to diagnose the root cause of the fault.
But plus £8.45 delivery, it’s cheaper from Amazon including delivery. https://www.amazon.co.uk/febi-bilstein-26652-Ignition-Switch/dp/B003NE2L6G
The battery charging rate you mention is OK as starting an engine does not take much charge from the battery. Even a solid minute of turning over .. say 200A is still only about 4AH of capacity.. You burn out the starter first with a good battery .. Your battery stopped charging while driving because its voltage rose healthily. Dont bother charging it.
Incidentally you can buy OEM switches from VW parts department. They are not worth the extra cash ( mine broke after 6 years) .
Dunno, are they? They have a ‘good quality’ one for 13.96 and it’s a best seller so it can’t last long.
