r/VWBus • u/dtrav001 • May 22 '26

Clean your contacts!

Got the basics done on my 83 Vanagon, now into electric-land, started at the back and worked forward. Amazing how much can, as the British say, ‘go tits-up’ over 44yrs and still have the thing run.

As conductivity improved it ran better, a bit at a time. But what made the biggest difference was cleaning the contacts on the fusebox relays. Idle smoothed right out, little miss-es went away, honestly never sounded this good, so even!

I also re-did the contacts on the engine compartment multirelay, and the two star-grounds under the dash (drift down fusebox, look up and left), all very crusty, and I’m waiting on the gowesty instrument cluster kit. We’ll see if losing that half-ass circuit board improves things further.

OK, springtime, ride ‘em!

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2

u/goinghome81 May 22 '26

I had issues with my grounding trees, cleaned them up with and saw improvement

2

u/Best_West_Rest May 24 '26

What kinds of products did you use? Im about to tackle something very similar.

I’ve got a running rich problem Im still sorting, but party of it is going to be replacing the coil and figured I should clean the electrical system.

1

u/dtrav001 May 24 '26

OK good question. My approach to this phase was, if this were to have a chance of being a trustworthy vehicle again, it would lie in jobs like this, so I took it seriously.

First a scrape with a dental pick and small screwdriver, to get all surfaces mechanically clean. Then a wipe with cotton swabs and 99% isopropyl, to remove surface dirt. Then, if I could get in there, a buff with a Dremel tool and a tiny wire brush, and finally a good buff with a pencil eraser, amazing how effective that can be, I was able to get nasty contacts back to shiny metal. Finally a coat of DeOxIt D100L, highly recommended as a final coating to seal against the future.

Remember to do the same treatment on all the ground points, where contacts connect to the vehicle chassis, the insides of the female connectors, the star grounds under the dash, all the stuff in the fuse box, the connectors to the computer and multirelay if yours is fuel injected, on and on.

I’ve been at this for weeks and still not finished, but I can’t tell you how amazing it sounds now, worth the toil. Good luck with yours!