Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire

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Mon 28 Aug 2006 16:37
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - Lounge Lizard
My car is a 1992 Volvo 240 SE manual 5-gear estate.

Hopefully this is a more straightforward problem than my last post! Thank you for the answers.

The problem is that the wire that runs to the high break-light has severed at the tailgate hinge.

I've got round this up to now by wiring the number plate light separately and making do with the 2 breaklights in the rear clusters (which work OK).

Problem is that the breaklight fuse keeps blowing (intermittently). I strongly suspect that this is because the severed end of the high break-light wire is flapping about and blowing the fuse when it happens to short out. I can't access the severed end because it's stuck too far into the roof. It's too difficult to remove the roof lining because (I think) it's a massive sheet of metal which is very hard to move without (a lot) of effort.

What I would rather do is break into the wire somewhere more convenient and either cap the stub off (or even reconnect it with a wire run through the car).

Where is the EASIEST place to access this wire?

I am happy to drill into the car body or destroy a small section of lining or trim; I don't care (much) about resale value (which is negligable). Possibly the left hand windscreen pillar above the fuse box; but I don't want to go randomly stabbing round with a drill or start ripping the interior when I might be barking up the wrong tree.
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Mon 28 Aug 2006 22:05
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - yorkiebar
Have you got a sunroof fitted?
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Mon 28 Aug 2006 22:13
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - Peter D
Sorry I have to rush off to Portugal goto www.volvoclub.org.uk/index.shtml for the method of removing the head lining ( easy ) and for replacing the hinge harness. Regards Peter

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Mon 28 Aug 2006 23:02
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - Lounge Lizard
Sorry I have to rush off to Portugal goto www.volvoclub.org.uk/index.shtml for
the method of removing the head lining ( easy ) and
for replacing the hinge harness. Regards Peter


It's 20 quid to join!
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Tue 29 Aug 2006 00:23
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - Dynamic Dave
It's 20 quid to join!


I suspect Peter D means to join the forum part of the site (which is free), not the Actual Volvo Owners Club itself.

www.volvoclub.org.uk/forums.shtml
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Tue 29 Aug 2006 07:50
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - Lounge Lizard
I'll try again, DD.

However, I followed the link and did a search, spending about 20 minutes trying to get the information.

What happened was that I got multiple pages of 'extracts'; ie document title followed by a large paragraph of phrases containing my search words (which were high-lighted).

Some looked useful, so I tried to click on the document title (which was clickable).

However, instead of going to the document, I kept going to the 'buy subscription' page.

This happened 3 or 4 times; where am I going wrong?
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Mon 28 Aug 2006 23:00
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - Lounge Lizard
Have you got a sunroof fitted?


No.
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Tue 29 Aug 2006 09:30
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - Cliff Pope
This is an old chestnut in Volvo circles.
Basically there are two opposing schools of thought. One says buy a replacement loom, hang the tailgate from the garage roof, remove one hinge at a time.

My view says that is pointless and over-complicated. The hinge wiring is a design fault and it will fail again after a few years. So rewire with ordinary cable, fed down a bit of plastic pipe, looped externally. Clamp it to the body lip next to a hinge, and on the tailgate, in such a way that it bends and folds unobtrusively as the gate opens and shuts.
There have been threads on the subject at the owners club, if you can get into the forum, but the above is the nub of the situation - authenticity or reliability.
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Tue 29 Aug 2006 10:39
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - Lounge Lizard
Thanks for the answer, Cliff, but my problem is getting hold of the severed wire stub. I've tried fishing about with narrow pliers but there doesn't seem to be enough slack to let me pull it out.

Where can I break into the cable (preferably before it enters the roof cavity)?

I'm happy to fiddle about with wires and trims but I'm a bit of a wimp when it comes to heavy engineering (which I'd rather leave to the roughy-toughies, good luck to 'em but I'm not one).
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Tue 29 Aug 2006 11:15
Volvo 240 severed tailgate wire - Cliff Pope
Have you got the roof lining freed? Grasp the rear edge, stretch it backwards, and you will see it has a kind of rigid plastic stiffener that hooks behind the metal lip. With that free you can peel it back to see where the wires come from. The tailgate loom plugs into a socket somewhere just inside the rear of the headlining.
Yours is presumably broken somewhere at the hinge, so you just need to locate the junction and work from there.
Tie a bit of string onto the broken wires from the tailgate before pulling them out, as it is tricky getting new wires down the inside of the tailgate.
Watch the colour coding, as I found mine was different from the book. Also if getting a proper loom you need the one to match the socket type. I once retrieved a good secondhand one only to find it wouldn't plug in.
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