Volkswagen: Fuel relay, brass pins, polo classic

Question
Hi Ron

My car a 2000 Polo Classic 1.6, the car just died on me in middle of traffic last week, got the car towed home and started eliminating faults, found that no fuel was entering the injectors. I bridged the two brass pins on the relay and the pump started pumping, so I replaced the relay. Today I noticed a very slight burning smell coming from the air ducts, this smell was only around for approxcimately 2minutes after I had started the car and then gone just like that, does this have any thing to do with the relay change?
Replaced old relay with an original part from VW, additionally the car is now performing much better then before, can relay cause problems like, irregular idle occationally, sluggish take off and non delayed accelartion while in high gear?


Answer
Hi Shikar,

Most likely, the problem is a bad ground to the relay or the contacts are dirty.  

The best thing you can do to fix this is to buy some good contact-cleaner spray from a local electronics store, and spray it into the relay plugs (per the directions) until clean.

Check where the ground goes, and make sure that is clean as well.

This should fix your problem.

Thanks,

Ron