Diesel Suddenly not starting- GP on all the time

[tonbra]

Help!- I have an 84 Rabbit Diesel. The car was running just fine before I did a bunch of repair work. I pulled the car into my garage and removed the power steering rack, replaced the tie rod ends, replaced the ball joints, replaced the water pump, replaced the timing belt, and replaced the right and left side motor mounts. After finially finishing with the toe rod ends and ball joints, I put the battery back in and attempted to start the car. Dead battery (so I thought). After a trickle charge, stil nothing.

Symptoms- no crank from the starter at all- nothing happens when starting the key. The gas gauge works and the head lights and high beam light will come on but the coolant and oil lights wont come on. I tried seeing if the Glow Plugs were getting any voltage and found out the GP's are getting power continously- even with the key off. It seems like the relay is not working. I reached down and went to pull the relay I thought it was when it came apart in my hand- turns out this was the UPSHIFT relay and not the GP relay.

I do not use the upshift in the car and in fact it is completely inoperable. Looking at the specs, the upshift relay has a lead that goes to the GP relay. Also turns out this upshift relay is not availalbe anywhere if I wanted to replace it.

One more thing- when I pulled the power steering rack out I noticed it had a small ground wire going from the firewall to the power steering rack. I thought that was weird but it looked like it was a factory thing. I did not replace this small ground wire as I didnt see what it was doing there. Also the GP relay is only a couple of years old and I have a replacement.

Questions-
1) what would cause the car to suddenly not start, no idiot lights, and GP's getting power consistently. Could it be this small ground or something else? It was working fine before the motor mount/water pump/timing belt/tie rods/and ball joint replacement job
2) Should I try to replace this Upshift relay? Does it impact the glow plug relay? Could it be causing the glow plug relay to not work right? (IE is the GP relay dependant on the upshift relay working?) If so, where can I get this upshift relay? Can I bypass this relay?

I need major help on this soon- I have to ship the car from Iowa to Washington in 3 weeks as I am moving back to Washington. If the car wont start I wont be able to ship it.

[Diesel Dean]

If the engine won't turn over it could be the wire that plugs into the starter silonoid. I have bumped that wire off on my Rabbit. It will not turn over if it's off. Not sure about the glow plug problem.

[82vdub]

You can try using a screwdriver and crossing the terminals from the large cable coming from the battery to the terminal that the wire goes to, and see if the starter turns over. Make sure the car is in neutral!

Other than this, you're not getting any lights at all, so I would start by looking for an issue with the main wiring harnass. I think there's a connector right up by the battery that brings power into the fuse panel. There may also be a fusable link in that line that could have gone bad too.

I don't know if the ground wire that you didn't re-ground is causing the issue, but missing grounds cause all sorts of weird issues.

[tonbra]

I am embarrased to admit this....Rookie mistake. When I started this repair job a month ago, the first thing I did was replace the pass side motor mount. When I put it back on I forgot to hook up the ground strap. That appeared to be my ground problem. I think I fried my glow plugs so I am going to check them tomorrow and should be able to get them started. I will hook up that small ground wire.

[82vdub]

Grounds are a very important part of an electrical system that sometimes isn't recognized or realized when doing some service work. Glad you figured it out. If the GP's were on, they're probably burnt up.

[Gromit]

Your glow plugs are probably fine. If there was no groundstrap on the engine, then what you thought was power to the glow plugs was probably coming from the engine block by way of the fuel shut-off. Missing grounds cause all sorts of weird issues, as 82vdub said. Now with the ground strap on, see if there really was power to them. If there was, your battery is drained too.

The wire grounding the steering rack is for your horn, I think.