'57 FR TDI - Traction light...

[AwesomeAl]

My mum has been out for a drive in her recently purchased Ibiza FR-TDI today and noticed that when the traction control kicks in, Instead of flickering on and off, It stays on until the engine is turned off and on again. At least I think its the traction control light anyway... The one which is a little yellow car with a pair of S's coming off the bottom of it...

As far as the manual is concerned the light shouldn't stay on...

Anyone else had this problem ?

 

[st10587]

ive herd when a brake light bulb goes it can cause this. so might be worth checking you brake lights

 

[AwesomeAl]

Hmm, No that's usually the Glowplug light that comes on when the brake pedal switch is goosed.

Have just checked all the bulbs and they are all working perfectly.

 

[st10587]

Hmm, No that's usually the Glowplug light that comes on when the brake pedal switch is goosed.

Have just checked all the bulbs and they are all working perfectly.

on my friends LCR the traction control light came on when the airmass meter went. or it could be a faulty/dirty ABS sensor as the car uses these to work out which wheel is spinning

 

[AwesomeAl]

on my friends LCR the traction control light came on when the airmass meter went. or it could be a faulty/dirty ABS sensor as the car uses these to work out which wheel is spinning

Strange, If anything the Engine/Emissions light should come on for that but I've seen stranger things happen

Possibly an ABS sensor... Need to get it plugged into Vagcom but can't get the car in to work until Friday as my mum needs it tomorrow and I'm off on Thursday.

 

[AwesomeAl]

^ Its the wavy car symbol out of that lot btw...

 

[Breezapom]

yeah that is the tc icon and no its not ment to stay on as you have said get it hooked up to vag.com when its showing and see what it says it couldnt be somthing simple like a dodgy tc button?

 

[AwesomeAl]

It's a bit of an odd one, You can be driving round for ages, and It won't actually come on unless there is any wheel-spin.

If one of the wheels does spin, it seems to come on but not go off...

Will have to get it on Vagcom either Friday or Saturday.

 

[Nath.]

Dirty or faulty wheel rotation sensor/encoder. BTW the prefacelift has a different icon for the traction control, It looks like an orange triangle IIRC.

 

[george130]

Could be a faulty connection to the alternator...

Look here:

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=173256

which has a link to here:

http://www.seatcupra.net/forums/showthread.php?t=162855

There's a connector block mounted on the front of the gearbox. The alternator wiring runs through this, and it's common for a wire to break off at the connector (happens on Ibiza and Fabia TDIs). The ESP module relies on a "load" signal from the alternator (not sure why) and the module will disable itself after 10 mins if it can't see the load signal.

You won't see if from above though, you'll have to get the undertray off and fiddle around from underneath.
I just soldered a link wire in to bypass the connector, problem solved. Can't see there will be any reason for the connector to ever be taken apart, suspect it's just there to aid assembly of the loom in the factory.

 

[AwesomeAl]

Hmm George that might make a bit of sense...

I have noticed that the headlights/dashlights dim quite a lot when you turn the steering wheel... almost as if the alternator is not powerful enough for the car?

It's probably worth noting again at this point that the car has done less than 17,000 miles and is little more than a year old !

 

[george130]

The headlight dimming thing is quite common, as the power steering unit draws a lot of current Same thing happens for me as well with the electric windows lol.

 

[james.l]

might be worth checking the air flow meter also, as this is where the signal is sent to limit the car from accelerating when the traction is lost. if you unplug the afm the traction light will stay on.

 

[markthommo_84]

happened to me a few weeks back. came on randomly whilst driving down a dual carriageway - no wheelspin or cause for it to come on but it stayed on til i turned engine off.

it was what George said - connection to the alternator. broken wire somewhere causing connection to break.

 

[AwesomeAl]

Cheers for the Input guys, I've got a day off tomorrow so will get under the car and have a good look I hope its nothing more serious than this anyway...

 

[Slippery_Stu]

I had the problem that George130 referenced above, dropped off the undertray and spotted it immediately.

A strip of wire, couple of inline crimps and some pliers and it was done in a matter of seconds.

Certainly worth a look.

 

[AwesomeAl]

it seems to be a common thing to the 130's? possibly the amount of latteral movement on the engine in combination with a wrongly selected length of wire to do the job ?

 

[AwesomeAl]

As suspected it was the Connector plug held on by a bracket to the gearbox. Took me a couple of minutes after getting the undertray off to find it. It was located right above one of the radiator hoses. A Two wire connector block in which BOTH wires had broken off.

Here you can see the connector in its "home" position with no wires attached on one side.

Here's the culprit! Two bare un-connected wires!

As you can see by the state of the connector the wires had quite literally clean snapped off!

I found myself One blue and white and a light blue length of wire Just enough to extend the loom so that lateral movement would not cause the problem again. I removed the wiring plug and used 4x standard red butt connectors to join the loom extension making sure the connect wires were connected to each other.

I then re-loomed the wires together using black electrical tape and used a bit of orange silicone rubber to stop the metal bracket chafing on the new loom. Enough slack was left on the side that had broken for any lateral movement not to cause the same problem.

Hopefully this rough guide to how I fixed mine with the photos will help some of you guys out in the future

Would like to give a big thank you to everyone who has helped out in this matter!
Cheers guys

 

[george130]

Glad you got it sorted Al! I'm sure those pictures will come in very useful in the future

 

[CupraMVR]

nice work al im sure we can get your in the workshop when 1 of them faults coming in now

you can be the Mk4 tech