The ground wire you see on the head is supposed to be there and is part
of the wiring harness that goes to the ECU.  However there should also
be a ground strap that goes from the head on the driver's side to the
firewall of the engine bay right below the coil.  Look in this area and
you should see a bolt with a bunch of brown ground wires coming to it.
This is where your strap should attach on one end and the other end
should go to the head where the one brown ground is from the distributor
harness.  You can use a ground strap from Wal-Mart to do this.  Or I
sell the VW ground straps for around $24.  The old strap was about 1/2"
wide braided copper strap (just in case you wondered what it looked
like.  Put a new strap in here, clean up the other grounds with a wire
brush or sand paper, and you should be good to go.

Hope this helps,
Ken Wilford
John 3:16
www.vanagain.com

Jim Morgan wrote:

>Greetings all.
>I have a question concerning the l head ground. As I understand it this is
>the ground
>that the ECU uses for richness? I have found in the archive that if this
>ground is not
>grounded properly it will run rich.
> I do not have this ground on the head. What I do have is a grounded wire
>going to the group of grounds unde the coil.
>Now my question how can I find out which one of the grounds belongs on the
>head?
>Does this ground have a number on the ECU plug? If so I can just use a
>continuity
>tester on ECU plug number and just check each wire individually. Is this a
>reasonable procedure? if so would anyone now the number on the ECU plug?
>
>Jim Morgan 86 Gl
>210,000.0 "bread box"
>Westlake,Ohio
>jm060356@aol.com
>
>
>