electrical teaser

Hi, got 200 tdi with gremlins. (dont they all)can any sparkys point me to likley causes of the following, I expect thier conected.
Central locking
lec window
dash lights
cig lighter all packed up
Main beam kills engine
ignition some times not coming on
any pointers or benifit of experance appreciated.have searched but not found, prob cos I dont know with unit to start from.
Im thinking couple of metres of wire and rewire bits i need , and dump rest.

start with checking the fusable links.
200TDi disco electrics are very simple - so easy to trace.

genraly yes but i had short on heater were you cant get at it.in depths of bulkhead, so took out heater feeds as it was nacked & real noisy anyway, but sometimes i was geting wir of it when alarm setting

Check the earth If dash lights are sort of dim. Generally causes a lot of hassle and the cable could just be knackerd.

Does sound like an earth since the only thing they all have in common is the earth return. Turning main beam on could be causing a voltage drop generally affecting the stop solenoid, hence engine cuts. Other possibility could be the main battery feed to the fuse box.
Don't know 200tdi's specifically, but if you have more than one fuse box, are all the faults related to items fed from that fuse box? Try running leads directly from the battery +ve to the fuse box feed.
If its an earth fault then you could try finding the earth returns from the affected circuits and connecting directly to the -ve on the battery.

I have a 200 shape v8

They only have one fusebox under the steering wheel

It has one main feed which comes through the bulkhead just near the clutch pedal mount. You can see it more easy from the engine side - follow the big wire from the alternator to it.

All the items are earthed at various points under the dash with big grey blocks that join em all together.

It is a big job in itself to take the dash out but will make finding the wiring a LOT easier.

Yes those fusible links can be trouble, never had an issue myself but they're near the battery apparently. It's odd that in my car I have one wire to the battery that goes direct to the starter, and from there it goes to the bulkhead connection/ alternator - but maybe the v8 is different

Either way your lucky cos 200s are very simple

Thanks for pointers so far, will check them as soon as I get dry day. any more ideas app. ta.