j299 relay location

[strayman]

Hello, could someone help me with the location of the j299 relay of the secondary air pump?
Thank you very much in advance

[Jim Haseltine]

ElsaWin is typically vague and misleading, suggesting via links that it's on the relay carrier in the righthand side of the boot but it isn't. On reading the detail layouts of all the relay carriers it seems that it should be in the block of relays in the case on the right side of the heater plenum chamber. I'd have taken a look but it's a pain and a half to get to all the fixing screws as the wiper arms have to come off before either flexing up or removing the plastic panel that runs along the bottom of the windscreen. As it took me an hour or so last time I removed it and I need to use the car later this afternoon I thought I'd leave it alone.

[strayman]

Hello, at that stage it has two four-legged relay number 643 and two small five-legged ones, none of those correspond to the j299, there are four other relays under the steering wheel inside and another in the box below the two computers but I can't find it.

[Jim Haseltine]

Think you're looking in the wrong case, it's the case on the right side of the chamber as viewed from the driver's seat, not the case that has the two ecus clipped to the top. Inside the case on the right side of the plenum chamber my car has a 3-gang relay carrier, position 1 (closest to the wing and hidden under the really thick positive cable that is also attached to the positive post in the engine compartment) is empty, and the other two positions hold type 643 relays. 643 being a VAG type code, not a relay identifer. The 643 relay in position 2 has wiring that matches those listed on the wiring schematics for the J299 air pump relay - a heavy red cable with grey tracer, a heavy black cable with grey tracer, a thin red cable with blue tracer and a thin green cable with brown tracer.

[strayman]

My car is left-hand drive.
On the right side I have both ECUs and only 1 relay under the cover with a 30 amp fuse
On the other side I have a box of 5 screws with fuses, two 643 relays and two 5-pin relays that are half the size of fine ones.

[Jim Haseltine]

This doesn't make sense to me - I've looked through the current flow diagrams time and time again and there's no mention of the secondary air injection relay (j299) being anywhere other than in the electronics box in the right side of the plenum - that's passenger side for left-hand drive and driver's side for right-hand drive. I've stolen some pictures from ATinOf's engine & gearbox removal thread - the item to look for is the big red 50A fuse in the holder clipped to the relay carrier - that's the fuse for the power feed switched by the j299 relay and the relay should be a 643 relay on that relay carrier. By any chance does your carrier have an unpopulated cabled up relay socket? Or could it be that the j299 relay and the 50A fuse have been detatched from the carrier and are lying under it on the base of the electronics box?




The ELSAWin engine removal instructions use pictures of a left hand drive model and show a similar relay carrier in that electronics box holding 2 643 relays, the big fuse holder and smaller fuse (the yellow fuse in the above pictures).