Wiring Bundle Repair

[Henry A Harper III]

My approach, which seemed easier at the time than attempting to extract the
harness out of the door, was: remove interior door panel, side footwell
cover (requires knee-crusher bar to come out), then window frame assembly
(dangles/rests on ground) for better access into the door. Now repeat
approximately 35x: snip out a foot of old wire around the hinge; solder &
heatshrink 18" new super-flexible wire to one end, fish through hinge
bellows and solder & heatshrink the other end. Reassembly is...you know the
rest. Took more than several hours, more like 5-6 (James calls me the
milkman) but this is enough of a pain that I didn't want to be in there
again because of a fast & sloppy first effort (oh, behave!). Front
passenger door took a lot less time (the next year) due to the vastly
smaller number of wires...and it was a dirty window switch anyway although
there were a couple of wires that were starting to crack too.

HTH
Henry Harper
http://www.henry-harper.com  hah at alumni.rice.edu
1991 200 quattro, 116k
1988 GTI 16v, 229k

On Monday, July 08, 2002 7:56 AM, Kneale Brownson
[SMTP:knotnook at traverse.com] wrote:
> --
> My approach to doing this repair, which I've been dreading and delaying
for
> eight or nine months, is planned as:  Remove inner door panel,  Remove
side
> footwell cover,  disconnect all wiring in door, pull complete harness
> through the doorjamb and into the footwell, make splices in EVERY wire
> about a foot either side of the center of where it passes through the
> doorjamb and then reinstall.  I've been thinking about possibly using
> pull-apart spade connectors to speed up future repairs.
>
> If you just want to fix the ones already obviously separated, I've read
> there is a harness retainer a little bit inside the door that if you
> disconnect, you can gain a bit of wiggle room in the doorjamb.
>
> At 09:34 AM 07/08/2002 -0400, Sullivan, Alan wrote:
>
> >Several of the wires in the wiring bundle between the driver's door and
the
> >body are broken, right where they flex as the door opens and closes.
 Fixing
> >them will be difficult, as they are bundled together rather tightly.
 Any
> >suggestions on how to get some slack into the wires for repair?  Also,
any
> >opinions on how best the make the repairs --- soldering (how do I do
that
> >without melting insulation on other wires) versus crimped-on connectors
or
> >some other method?
> >
> >Alan Sullivan
> >Northern Va
> >91 200TQ
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> --
>
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