[V6-12v] reverse lights?

[Clive Young]

I did the exact same repair about a year and a half ago and this is a common
repair. The only difeerence on my repair was that I took the whole wiring
harness out and did it inside. More work but easier to work on afterwards. I
sourced some "high flex" robotic wire. Really cool stuff. The advice of
staggering the connections is good I also did this. I also used different
sizes of heat shrink. I got some real small stuff for the individual wires
and a fatter piece to cover the entire project. Worked great. 

This is definitely the place to start. That and the reverse switch of
course. 

-----Original Message-----
From: v6-12v-bounces at audifans.com [mailto:v6-12v-bounces at audifans.com] On
Behalf Of apowell at colocougs.org
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 12:58 PM
To: v6-12v at audifans.com
Subject: [V6-12v] reverse lights?

"Brian Heringer" <heringer at canada.com> asked:

[My wife has a '94 100 2.8 automatic.  When she engages reverse the back up
lights do not come on
and the passenger mirror will notkick down while the button is in the
correct position on the dash.
When the mirror kicks down, the back up lights are on  - maybe once out of
15 tries.  Is there a
switch somewhere that I need to replace?]

First, before you get carried away, make sure both lamps in your reverse
lights are the correct
ones. One of my friends had a number of recverse light problems causes by a
store that sold him
lamps with the wrong base. But then...........

Here's another vote to check the wiring harness on the trunk lid. I just
finished repairing the
wiring on my wife's 1993 90Q. The symptoms were:

1) The door locks started locking by themselves, sometimes when the trunk
lid was closed, and
usually when the car was shifted from reverse to 1st gear. (This turned out
to probably be a short
in the reverse light wire.)

2) The gauges started blowing fuses, then the dash lights started blowing
fuses, and both usually
happened when the car was shifted into reverse.

I opened the trunk, traced the wires down the left side (there are seven
wires in the 90Q, all
running down the left side of the trunk lid) and started wiggling the wires
where the bend occurs as
the trunk is shut. Sure enough, I heard the door locks trigger when I
wiggles the wires.

The fix:

1) I carefully split and peel back the outer sheath for 2" on either side of
the suspected break
area. BE CAREFUL because this stuff is tough and it's really eash to cut
your hand if a knife or
razor blade slips. Try NOT to cut the insulation on the wires.  

2) Once the breaks were found, I cut out about 4" of material (2" either
side of the break) in each
wire and replaced it with a setion about 1" longer than the original. Note -
if you want to vary the
placement of the cuts to stagger the repair joints and reduce bulk in one
place, you can certainly
do so.  I cut to two different lengths to achieve this.

3) Don't use butt splices to connect the wires, because they are much too
bulky and won't stand up
well to repeated wiggling. Solder the connections, BUT - NOTE THIS - get
some heat-shrink tubing and
slide two pieces over the inserted wire before you make the last solder
connection. 

4) After the soldering is complete, take a book of matches, position the
heat-shrink turinb over the
solder joints and use matches to heat the tubing and shrink it to form a
protective covering. This
is about the least bulky way you can make this connection.

5) I re-wrapped the entire work area of the harness with friction tape
(electrical tape is more
brittle0 and used small cable ties over the friction tape to secure it. I
then used other cable ties
to secure the harness into place on the trunk lid and hinge.

This entire repair will take perhaps 60-90 minutes if you take your time.
Tools required:

Soldering iron / solder
Heat-shrink tubing
Wire stripper
Matches
Replacement wire (color is up to you - "primary wire" from Auto Zone works
fine)
Sharp knife or razor blade to CAREFULLY cut sheath off wiring harness
Beer (as required)

My bet is that you will solve your problem. I used slightly heavier wire to
replace the original,
with the thought that it might last well.

************************************
Al Powell
apowell at gocougs.wsu.edu
1958 Fiat 1200 Transformabile Spyder
1983 Datsun 280ZX Turbo
1993 Audi 90Q
1991 Camaro RS Convertible
1997 Chebby Blazer
1999 Chebby Blazer
************************************ 


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