Florida. I crossed the Georgia line going north and picked up the smell of what I thought was a pulp mill. It may have been, but it didn't last that long. CEL lite up and the pesky low power advisory set again. I pulled over waited a few seconds and restarted the car, the advisory reset and off I went with a CEL lite. Fast forward a few hours I get home and roll into Auto Zone to find a P2601 code auxiliary coolant pump. Pin point trouble shooting guide says to look for voltage ........ I ordeded a pump before I got into it. Good thing I did the connector, wire and pump were fried.

After I got things removed to get @ the pump I saw that only one screw was holding the pump tight, so I recon someone had already looked into this and decided not to replace the pump. I'll hit the dealer for the connector on Tuesday. Quite a bit of plastic is broken under the hood as well. I guess some hack with a hammer was working on it. Jeez.

Update: Somehow I got off on the wrong track with this code P2601 is NOT the Aux Coolant pump. Its the S/C coolant pump. Big difference in function and price. The S/C pump delievers coolant to the S/C intercooler, its intertwined with the rest of the cooling system and the pump is on 100% of the time when the key is in the II posistion.

The Aux Pump (which I did need because the connector had melted) provides hot water to the heater core when commanded. I'm not really sure of the details of how it totally works, but that's the short story.

That's not a pretty sight, at least you got home!

Yikes!

Yeah I took a calculate risk. Seeing this damage, I took notice to a truck fire on the way home. It went up quick because when I passed no equipment was on site yet. The middle of the truck was sagging it got hat hot. I think he had gas in the bed of the truck and threw a butt out and it caught. Either way I felt bad for the fellow. He was dragging a trailer with maybe a few bikes in it. Saw a HD sticker.

I really don't think all of the damage happened @ once.... you would think a fuse should have given up first.

Ouch, that connector has really had some amps through it, hasn't it !!

If it's any consolation, I had to recently put the wife's New Beetle into a shop to find out why the air con had stopped. It turned out to be the fuse block holding the fuse for the system. Block and fuse had melted under heat so the fuse contacts no longer had continuity. It is a big amps fuse, (30 amps, I think), but had not blown, yet the heat had ruined both fuse and fuse block. A case of serious underspecification by VW. Clearly those German design engineers are not all perfect !

Fast forward a few days and trip to the dealer to no avail I took the burnt out shell of the connector and made new pins and filled it with hot glue and a 5 minute epoxy. The connect has lost its self retention feature so I used tie wraps @ the base of the connect to retain it all is well in that aspect.

I wanted to get to the bottom of what happened so I looked @ the number 8 fuse in the trunk. I found a 15 amp in place of a 10 that had gotten very hot and blistered the fuse. The element was so distorted I was amazed it still had continuity. No damage to the fuse box or socket as far as I can tell. I checked for voltage @ that the fuse and found 2 volts +/- of a few tenths after I replaced it with a 10 amp. I thought that was a bit unusual so I checked @ the pump same voltage. The rear climate controls are locked out from up front so that maybe correct. I didn't have time to explore that.

I only remember taking 2 connetors off of that right side. One for the coolant tank and the other for the aux. pump. I found a third LOL I recon I'll figure out where it went. Anyone know were the other might have come from? Pics tomorrow if I can't find the missing recepticle.

Dave

Everything has been taken care and reinstalled. No more yellow light and advisory but I now have a SC coolant pump screaming. Yup that's were the loose connector went. Wished I had know that before i closed things up.

Dag gone advisory light is back with the degraded power statement. Going to Autozone and see what the code is this time. I hope its not P2601 again. I hate doing stuff twice. Time to upgrade from the old Snap On MT2500 to something else

I borrowed a CanOBDII 3130 this afternoon read the code P2106 popped out again. Cleared them and drove the 50+ miles home. NO R/P of CEL. The S/C pump was put on order last Sat. looking for it this Weds.