FIFTY
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Discovered another age related gremlin last weekend when I pulled the 4200GT out of the garage to give it a warm up on the drive. I eventually realised the remote boot release is not working - the number plate lights were also dead.
I could hear the relay for the boot release clicking which helped me trace the fault back to where the wiring loom is secured to the gas strut... I squeezed the loom and the release and lights came back to life
The repair turns out to be a little more fiddly than I would have liked as that rubber sleeve is rather narrow and I have lost the two blue wires inside the sleeve. Upon closer inspection I can see cracks in the shielding exposing the bare copper cables for the remaining 3 intact wires (more like semi intact) so I concluded that I need to strip back the boot lining to get as much of the loom free as possible in order to do a quality repair
Removed the cover on the inside of the boot lid and disconnect the 4x connectors. This will allow you to pull some of the loom back through to give you some slack. I am not going to extract all of it as it won't be fun to feed back through into the boot lid.
It may not be totally necessary to do the above step but I would like to slacken off the loom at both ends to avoid any further damage
Next strip back the boot lining with a focus on the left hand side where the CD changer is fitted. There is a how to on doing this somewhere I can reference if needed... I think most of us who work on our cars regularly can strip back the boot lining in our sleep by now lol. This will expose the main connector for that length of wiring loom
Disconnect and carefully pull the connector through the void and carefully out of the car via the grommet hole
Then you should have enough slack to pull the blasted rubber sleeve back enough to expose the wires for repair
Now I am waiting on a heat gun and some solder butt conectors so I can finish the repair.
This is a work in progress but I thought to mention in case anyone else has the same issue when getting their car back on the road for Spring as it is an age/wear related issue that has caused the failure. I will update soon.
I could hear the relay for the boot release clicking which helped me trace the fault back to where the wiring loom is secured to the gas strut... I squeezed the loom and the release and lights came back to life
The repair turns out to be a little more fiddly than I would have liked as that rubber sleeve is rather narrow and I have lost the two blue wires inside the sleeve. Upon closer inspection I can see cracks in the shielding exposing the bare copper cables for the remaining 3 intact wires (more like semi intact) so I concluded that I need to strip back the boot lining to get as much of the loom free as possible in order to do a quality repair
Removed the cover on the inside of the boot lid and disconnect the 4x connectors. This will allow you to pull some of the loom back through to give you some slack. I am not going to extract all of it as it won't be fun to feed back through into the boot lid.
It may not be totally necessary to do the above step but I would like to slacken off the loom at both ends to avoid any further damage
Next strip back the boot lining with a focus on the left hand side where the CD changer is fitted. There is a how to on doing this somewhere I can reference if needed... I think most of us who work on our cars regularly can strip back the boot lining in our sleep by now lol. This will expose the main connector for that length of wiring loom
Disconnect and carefully pull the connector through the void and carefully out of the car via the grommet hole
Then you should have enough slack to pull the blasted rubber sleeve back enough to expose the wires for repair
Now I am waiting on a heat gun and some solder butt conectors so I can finish the repair.
This is a work in progress but I thought to mention in case anyone else has the same issue when getting their car back on the road for Spring as it is an age/wear related issue that has caused the failure. I will update soon.
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