So tonight I noticed that the ABS light was faintly glowing on my 6N2 GTi. I don't know yet if the faint glow is because the bulb is weak or just not located properly in it's socket, (or maybe that's too old tech and it's all LED's) lets assume it's lit up properly for the moment.

I then dug out my D900 OBD-II reader to see if I could see any codes. Unfortunately it could not seem to handshake with the car. From reading around a little bit am I correct in understanding that the 2000 6N2 is not OBD-II compatible and I need to download VCDS-Lite from Ross-Tech and get myself a USB adaptor cable ?

Assuming the above is correct, are there any suggestions as to what the fault may be. The car is new to me and i have just done an engine out / in with clutch change to get the car back on the road so have no idea if the fault was on the car when I bought it as a non runner

Might be that water has got past a seal on a wheel sensor.had this on a 6n during winter.spray some wd40 in the connectors if you get chance

failing that do try to get your diagnostics running as you may not have a fault code but can check the wheel sensors are reading equal in measuring blocks

Have a close inspection of the two fuses on top of the battery, they are prone to cracking and this leads to the ABS control unit seeing this as a low voltage and so throws up the fail light ( surface mount LED)

Thanks for the responses

The ABS light staying on was intermittent. I have replaced the fuses and the ABS light comes on and goes off at the correct time so i think that part of the problem is fixed.

However, the original problem remains, in that the ABS light is very dim, in fact in daylight you need to put your hand over the speedo to create a bit of shade to be able to see when it is lit.

I have removed the instrument panel in the hope that I could see in more detail what was happening with the surface mount LED but can't seem to separate the PCB from the plastic instruments and dials.

Any advice how to do that or why my LED is very dim ?

Here's a couple of photos showing the light on, and then off

Hi mate. First post here. Have you got a wiring diagram for the clocks? I would look to see if one of the multiplugs is loose or has a loose pin. If you can get a wiring diagram check for 12v at the abs pin. I will look around see if i can post a wiring diagram

http://workshop-manuals.com/volkswagen

Here is an online manual. Hope it helps

Thanks for the link to the online manual, unfortunately I couldn't find any wiring diagrams so I'll just have to wait until I get my Haynes manual.

I have also got myself a USB reader and VAG-COM so can now interrogate the car. Having cleared all the stored errors I am left with a single error code which is because of poor wiring to the first lambda sensor. In other words there are no ABS error codes.

In the meantime, has anyone ever had an issue with an LED not fully illluminating or any advice on how to get access to the instrument circuit board once removed from the car.

Am I correct in thinking that the instrument panel is married to the ECU so I can't simply replace the instrument panel. I'm happy enough with the car, but want it solved before MOT time is due

You may need to recode the keys if you change the clocks. I can ask my mate who used to work for vw if he knows of anything. Pm me tomorrow to remind me. Can you do me a favour? See if the haynes manual has any gearbox info. Ie overhaul etc?

Have a look at connectors on abs pump. You might have desturbed them? You can take clocks out and strip out cuircut board. It might be an easy fix.

Spoke to my mate who said the clocks arnt coded on early ones. Not sure about later ones sorry. He said there wasnt anything comon that he remembers.

Thanks for the suggestions and following up for me. I'll check the connections and have been told that I should check the ABS wheel sensors as well. If the clocks aren't coded then a clock swap might be worth a try. I haven't been able to figure out how to get at the circuit board, it seems as thought you remove it from the frony which means the needles and clock faces need to be removed, but i don't want to risk damaging those.

do you know if the vehicle mileage is stored on the ECU or the clocks ?

I would have thought it would be on the clock pcb. If you were to get a set of clocks off ebay there are loads of moble people who adjust the clock milage to what was on yours. Just remember it is ilegal to wind back milage to less than what yours has done.

Also there is a company called ac tronic.

Www.actronics.co.uk

Send them a message usually arount £45 for diag then quote for repair.

OK, that's really helpful, many thanks. I think what I need to do is get hold of the wiring diagram for the clocks with a pinout and force a 12v feed to the ABS light and see how that works.

That's work in progress at the moment.

You may need to recode the keys if you change the clocks. I can ask my mate who used to work for vw if he knows of anything. Pm me tomorrow to remind me. Can you do me a favour? See if the haynes manual has any gearbox info. Ie overhaul etc?

No you don't. Early VW used Motometer clocks that were independent units. You could effectively replace one clock with another set, so long as electrically they were the same. The immobilizer is a separate unit.

I believe immobilizer coded clocks came in with VDO clocks.

OK, that's really helpful, many thanks. I think what I need to do is get hold of the wiring diagram for the clocks with a pinout and force a 12v feed to the ABS light and see how that works.

That's work in progress at the moment.

Here's the pin out for the speedo 6N2 Speedo connections.doc

Here's the connection from the ABS Control unit to Speedo

That's great, thanks for the advice and especially to nige for the pinouts. Looks like i need to whip the speedo out and test across pins 9 & 19

Tonight I took the clocks out again for another look. I was hoping to either confirm that there was a 12v feed to pin 19, or that by applying 12v to pin 19 and using pin 9 or 7 as earth on the clocks that the LED would illuminate.

Unfortunately I could neither get a feed to pin 19 on the block connector, or get the LED to light up by applying 12v to the clocks. so I decided to put the car back together.

Now I have got an airbag light on. When I switch the ignition on the airbag extinguishes after 5 seconds, but then comes on one second later.

I note the warning about reading airbag controllers on 2000-2001 cars and suspect the Polo uses the airbag controller that can fail from being just being read. Is it now safe with the later software to use VAG-COM to read the airbag codes, or is there something else I should do

I seem to be taking one step forward and two back with this issue, at the moment, but would like to retrieve / remove the airbag codes before my gf uses the car tomorrow, but don't want to create another bigger problem

You should be safe with VCDS/Vagcom but I seem to recall the airbag on yours will need a CAN bus capable lead

Thanks Nigel. I just connected and successfully read and cleared the airbag codes, so whatever was needed I had it. No more warning light

Now back to the original problem

Looking at the wiring diagram the abs light is controlled by the clocks not two wires. It looks like t19 poweres up the abs side of the clock and t32 is for traction control light so powering up the clock wiring isnt going to work. If you can get to the circuit board you could test the led/diode for the abs lamp. Powering up circuits isnt a good idea unless your 100% sure of what it is.

Hmm, looks like I've still to get my head around 21st century car wiring

I think I see what you are saying. From the wiring diagram, am I correct that pin 22 of the ABS control unit connects to the clocks at pin 19 of the blue connector block. Pin 14 of the same other conector block is also connected to the ABS contol unit at pin 24, but there is a difference. Pin 14 is directly connected to the TCS/ESP warning lamp, but pin 19 does not have a direct connection, the ABS warning lamp K47 is a purely internal connection and so cannot be directly tested unless you understand how the whole circuit board functions.

On the advice of the guy who MOT's my cars I checked all the ABS sensors today. They lie in a range of 1003 ohm to 1083 ohm which seems to be in the right ball park and at least they are consistent with each other, so I think that's another potential source of the problem ruled out.

I also serviced the brakes on the car, cleaned up the calipers and removed the small rust lips from the inner & outer edges of the discs. After a test drive with some fairly harsh braking the car is pulling up straighter than it was before and the ABS is functioning correctly.

I can't get to the LED to test it directly as the circuit board is still fixed into the clock console and I haven't yet worked out how to dismantle the clocks to extract the circuit board. I suspect that you have to pull off the needles from the spindle and then can remove the front face of the clocks. I looked at doing that but as the needles didn't seem to want to come off the spindles with a sensible amount of force I chickened out and put them back together rather than risk breaking them.

Has anyone ever done this and posted a guide ?

Edited 28 June, 201412 yr by 937carrera

Pin 14 of the Blue connector is for the rear fog light warning!! Pin 14 of connector 32A (Green) is for the TCS/ESP connected to pin 24 of the ABS, but you don't have that !

If the needles are like the ones on the 6N1 they do need a bit of effort to remove them, I used two "instrument" screwdrivers as levers to get them off

Pin 14 of the Blue connector is for the rear fog light warning!! Pin 14 of connector 32A (Green) is for the TCS/ESP connected to pin 24 of the ABS, but you don't have that !

If the needles are like the ones on the 6N1 they do need a bit of effort to remove them, I used two "instrument" screwdrivers as levers to get them off

I understand with the second part of the first sentance, (and now i don't have to go hunting for the TCS button in the morning), but having looked at the speedo connections document again I think I got confused between the connector blocks. The ABS conection is on pin 19 of the blue connector block, the TCS is on pin 24 of the green connector block. I'll edit the post above to avoid confusion of future readers, thanks

Only advice for needle removal is have clocks connected to car. Turn ign on and the needles will move to there on position. Best to do when car has been left overnight so the engine is cold. Put a little pencle mark where the tip of the needles sit so thats where they go back on. Disconnect clocks and you can remove needles and face plates knowing it will go back correctly. You might be lucky and find there is a bit of crud on the led. They are plcc2 leds i think so about 30p each off ebay. Make sure you buy the yellow one. I would recomend a pcrepair shop to change the led as its tiny unless your good with a soldering iron.