Fixing damaged wires - Golf hatch hinge area

Hi Folks,

Looks like I have several damaged wires in the rubber flex connection between the car body and the hatch (03 Golf driver's side). Everything is still working, I just checked to see if the flex connections were ok, and they not...LOL. Has anybody repaired or replaced these wires before? Any tips or tricks?

I won't be fixing it until next weekend, but I thought I'd ask in case anybody has done it before and can offer any advice. I have lots of wire and butt splices on hand...just need to fish the old wires out and the new ones in...I guess?

There is no extra length in the harness, so you will have to add a piece to do the repair.

Remove the hatch trim and release all the harness retaining clips to give yourself some slack to work on it. Do one wire at a time, and don't make all the splices land at the same place to keep the size of the bundle manageable.

One of the first things I ran into after getting my car. I had broken wires (they gave out soon after I got the thing, as all was working when I got the car) and wires with a lot of cracked insulation.

I bought a used harness and installed that, only to discover, as I had it pretty much installed, that it too was starting to break down. What I did was to do some pre-emptive patching, something that perhaps you can do now. I wrapped a bunch of tape around each wire so that if the insulation cracks it won't shift off and short to another wire: it's tight quarters, but that also means that the tape really ain't going to shift off the wires either once it's there; and, it might be that you're kind of just packing the tape in there, as getting wraps on some wires is really almost impossible.

ID Parts, I think, has a decent price on a new harness, $150(?) for the driver's side. Trying to do a bunch of splicing in this area (even out away from the flex area, which is where you would need to be splicing) would be a pain: adding wire means you're doing a fair amount of splicing- spicing two ends for every wire. Pretty much going to be tearing most of the trim out anyway, not much more work to install a replacement harness.

Thought that I'd heard that dealers were wanting something like $500 for this repair (can't recall whether that includes a new harness or not).

My $0.02.

I replaced the harness on both sides of my wife's 03 Golf the other day. I considered splicing but when planning out the job, I figured I'd have to remove the harnesses anyway so I could solder each wire cleanly.

Instead, I just ordered the new harnesses from ECS, pulled everything out, and replaced both sides.

Word of note: the right side harness is routed above the rear headliner and connects to the left side, so don't button up the driver side if you start there first.

last one i fixed i disconnected the entire harness from the hatch and fed it through the hole to give room to work.... I think next time I'll replace the worn/broken section with new wires to keep the repaired bundle thickness at the flex point to a minimum

Awesome, thanks for the replies guys.

Do you guys have any links as to where to buy...or what exactly is the harness called so I can search for it?

Part numbers?

Thanks again,
Rem

1J6971147P and 1J6971726A

lapse said:

1J6971147P and 1J6971726A

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Excellent. Thanks for that.

Rem

Yeah, it was ECS Tuning that I had seen having the harnesses. I believe that these are the best prices that you're going to find: dealer wanted something like $250 for the one ECS sells for $160.

I ordered both harnesses from ECS and shipped to Canada. Even with the tariffs, it was still $75 cheaper than the dealer.

I used these...

http://www.europeanperformanceproducts.com/shop/index.php/cat/c2879_VW.html

good quality and did the job.

They don't make wire insulation like they used to

TDI-DIY said:

I used these...

http://www.europeanperformanceproducts.com/shop/index.php/cat/c2879_VW.html

good quality and did the job.

Click to expand...

Well they're priced right...

How many wires are in the right side?...Approximately. Just curious...the rubber flex isn't broken on that side...yet.

I can't remember how many wires were on each side but I replaced both sides and the the harnesses included all of the wires needed. The the insulation seemed like good quality and was really flexible unlike the factory wiring. The only slight challenge was making room for the large bundle of connectors but it was easy enough to fit everything. Time will tell how the wiring holds up I suspect that it will last as long as the Golf is alive.

I didn't want to R&R the entire factory harness so this seemed like the right solution for me. Price was good and shipping was fast enough. Good vendor too. I checked around and they have a decent reputation...

TDI-DIY said:

Time will tell how the wiring holds up I suspect that it will last as long as the Golf is alive.

Click to expand...

I figure the same...although I decided to repair my harness and I installed a new rubber connector/grommet between the body and the hatch. It was only $9 and change at the VW dealer.

I ran fresh new wires, and soldered the connections and covered with heat shrink, and then wrapped the harness in Super 88 electrical tape. I pulled the whole harness out of the car and put it on the bench, then replaced each cracked wire one by one.

It took a while to do, but I figured for a $10 part and some of my time, it would be fine for this old VW. I had all the wiring supplies on hand anyway...if I didn't, I probably would have bought the proper harness. I expect the repair will last as long as the car does. As you say, time will tell.

Cheers,
Rem

Wiring Gauge Size

Alright instead of starting a new thread, I wanted to revive this one.

I've already temporarily fixed the wires in these boots (2002 Golf).

I used heat shrink solder butt connectors last time, but I applied the fix in the middle of the boot. All was good, but the large brown ground wire in the passenger boot keeps breaking which leaves me with no defrost on the rear window.

I'm taking the plunge and hoping to fix it this weekend.

I'm hoping someone knows the gauges of wire that runs under those boots. I know there are a couple of larger wires on each side and the rest are smaller gauge. Trying to get some silicone rubber coated wire this time so I never have to do this again. That stuff is really flexible. Thanks in advance!

Wires in question (not my photo)

Bump for tonight, anyone know? Need to order up some silicone wire before the weekend... None of the wiring diagrams show the gauges. Thanks!
(I don't have my car right now)

I will be attempting this fix too because of frayed/overstressed wires (plus hatch won't lock).

Does anyone have a diagram of what color wires do what, and what gauge (I think it's 22awg but not 100% sure).
Any help would be appreciated!

dynamic said:

I will be attempting this fix too because of frayed/overstressed wires (plus hatch won't lock).

Does anyone have a diagram of what color wires do what, and what gauge (I think it's 22awg but not 100% sure).
Any help would be appreciated!

Click to expand...

So I finally found another thread (not on here) where someone measured the large brown ground and a couple of smaller wires and they turned out to be 3mm and 1.5mm OD respectively. OEM wires have the PVC housing.

If you're doing this, I highly recommend using a silicone coated wire. They are really flexible and have a fine strand count which makes them perfect for the job.

The thing with silicon is they have a bit thicket insulation compared to PVC. What really matters is you try to match the cross section of the wire to what is OEM. You want to make sure that it can handle the current.

I think you're right about the small wire being 22ga.

Here's what I bought...I'm going to use 14ga silicone housing for the larger wires (ground, etc) and I'm either going to use 18 or 20 ga for the smaller wire. Either will work I know, because I used standard 14 and 18 ga pvc housing wire for the last fix. All are good except that earth (brown) ground that completes the circuit for the rear defroster, it's broken twice.

Here's the wires.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075VQ4G2Y/ref=nav_timeline_asin?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Silicone-Ele...coding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=J8A7E38C548TNF349WDA

https://www.amazon.com/Silicone-Ele...ncoding=UTF8&refRID=J8A7E38C548TNF349WDA&th=1

18 and 20 are pretty good wires to have around for other projects too.

I may even do a writeup for this fix. Sorry I don't have a wiring diagram as I'm writing this, my manual is at home

I'm in the same boat; left side hatch wires are cracked or broken. I tried to butt connect them, but now my rear defogger is out again. I think I will go with the OEM replacement.

KrashDH Did you replace all the smaller wires with 18awg last time, or just the bad/broken ones? I usually would go with bigger, but was going to replace with the same size since it's a hinged area (thinking maybe they should have some room to slide/move as hatch opens and closes).


I will be replacing with some PTFE wire I already purchased,
but I do like the idea of silicone wire due to its flexibility.

dynamic said:

KrashDH Did you replace all the smaller wires with 18awg last time, or just the bad/broken ones? I usually would go with bigger, but was going to replace with the same size since it's a hinged area (thinking maybe they should have some room to slide/move as hatch opens and closes).


I will be replacing with some PTFE wire I already purchased,
but I do like the idea of silicone wire due to its flexibility.

Click to expand...

just the ones I needed to cut a section out of, and yes 18ga, it's what I had laying around. It was slightly bigger than the OEM wire.

Tomorrow I'll be doing it right, cutting all the wires on each side of the boot and replacing with a length of silicone wire. All of my solder butt connectors will be in the door and in the cargo area, and just wire will run through the boots

KrashDH said:

Tomorrow I'll be doing it right, cutting all the wires on each side of the boot and replacing with a length of silicone wire. All of my solder butt connectors will be in the door and in the cargo area, and just wire will run through the boots

Click to expand...

That's the way I would do it.

Never used silicone wire. Will have to look into it.

wonneber said:

That's the way I would do it.
Never used silicone wire. Will have to look into it.

Click to expand...

I'm halfway through. So far so good. Silicone wire is a must here...

I just finished the project. Glad for that to be over.

I just finished with the new OEM installation also. The window washer disconnect was the most time consuming part of the whole ordeal. Now that the hatch lock is exposed, I will now attempt to unseize it again before I reinstall the plastic cover. I had to reinforce a few of the clips on this cover that had broken off or were about to. May as well take advantage of the mild weather.

Hey just a note. This guy does a good job showing how to do the left side at least.

seigel said:

Hey just a note. This guy does a good job showing how to do the left side at least.

Click to expand...

He's got some good videos. I've used a lot of his vids in my repairs. I used that one too when I was looking at getting all the trim pieces off.

FWIW (since this thread was bumped) I did a complete write-up with photos on my '02 Golf since there was nothing out there complete. I wanted to document what it took for this repair. Wasn't hard, just pretty time consuming to do all the wiring correctly.

Thanks for sharing that!