Thread: Earthing problems 300tdi continued

Hi All

I took the advice offered here and crawled under and gave my earthing points (chassis & bell housing) a good clean-up and it appears to have helped. I ran the aircon and hi-beam and then switched things off trying to find tell tale twitches in the fuel and temp gauges. Looks good and I'd say improved, though it has not really been tested.

As was stuffing around down there, disconnecting and reconnecting and lightly brushing the leads on the chassis as I got hold of them when briefly both earthing points were disconnected, there was the odd tiny spark. Isn't this a bad sign? Does it mean leakage and a positive charge? I thought it was supposed to be dead as a doornail down there.

Should I hand over to a proper sparky? Everything SEEMS okay now.

You almost certainly have some things that are on all the time - for example, a clock, possibly things such as central locking, alarm, and of course the radio memory. And was an interior light on?
While none of these take much current, they will spark when disconnected, especially if the device has significant inductance.

Hope this helps,

John