ground fixes
http://www.turbobricks.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322593
Gehtto FIx
Just after I bought my ’92 245 back in October ’12 the rear wiper and electric lock quit, so when we had a bit of a warm spell in early January, I thought I’d have a go at fixing it. After doing some research on replacing the right rear harness, and recognizing that the stock installation (removing the tailgate and hinges) would be a bit of a bugger having to work alone, I decided to try the tailgate to rear headliner fix. So, I bought a cheapie right rear harness from FCP (just in case something went wrong), and went at it.
The job was a bit longer than expected as I’d never had to go digging inside the tailgate or headliner before, but all went well in the end. Removing the plastic cover on the lever for the tailgate inside latch was difficult without breaking it, partly due to the fact that, although the weather had warmed up a bit, it was still cold enough for it to break if the job wasn’t done gently. With that done, removing the plastic latch cover was easy, as was removing the tailgate panel, although I still had to be gentle when popping the plastic retainers. I also found there were what looked to be loose wires just stuffed willy-nilly inside the tailgate, and pulling down the headliner was not as easy as the search info said. In addition, I found that the connectors for the wiper motor and electric lock on the new harness were opposite to the ones on the old one, and not having spares, I had to remove the connectors and switch them around to mate with the wiper motor and lock leads. With that done, I did a few trial connections of the harness from the headliner connector, which was also a bit hard to dig out, to the wiper motor and lock to make sure that everything worked (they did) and to check where I wanted to run the harness.
Next, then, it was on to the installation of the new harness. As I could see the old harness in the access hole for one of the tailgate hinge screws, I decided that it would be the ideal place to bring the new harness out from the tailgate and into the headliner, so I gently pulled out the old harness in a loop and cut it as close as possible to the top of the access hole with my aircraft snips. After finding out that the tailgate end connectors of the old harness could hang up inside the channel in the tailgate, I cut off a couple and then easily pulled out the tailgate section of the old harness. Looking at the new harness, I decided to remove a couple of the connectors again and then bound the ends with some electric tape in case they hung up when fishing the harness down through tailgate channel. After that, I fished the harness through the channel at the hinge screw hole with a length of coat hanger wire with no problems, re-installed the connectors, plugged them in, and tested the wiper motor and lock function again. All worked OK, so I next cut and removed the remainder of the old harness inside the headliner.
With that all done it was time to tie up the loose ends, so to speak. I forgot to get photos during all this, but I do have shots after the installation was finalized. The first thing to do was to put some plastic loom around the open part of the harness. The smallest I had was ?’ loom and that wouldn’t go into the hinge screw access hole, so I had to add a rubber protector and zip tie it in place
(see photo #3). A smaller size loom (3/8”?) would be better, so I’ll get some later and change it in. The next thing was to set the length of the harness which will work with the tailgate open and closed
(see photos # 1, 3 and 4), and then tidy up the loose wires under the head liner and inside the bottom of the tail gate and zip-tie them in place. With that done the re-installation of the tailgate panel and latch went in easily, but also gently as they were still cold and I didn’t want to break any plastic bits. Finally, I made small cuts in the lip of the head liner and added metal clips to hold it in place where the harness runs through it
(photo #2). The last photo
(#4 again) is an inside shot with the tailgate closed showing that there aren’t any tight bends in the harness loom, and it doesn't interfere with anything in the cargo area.
So that’s if folks, except that the left side harness is showing signs of wear, but I think that it will last until warmer weather to do that fix, and it won’t take as long now that I know what’s involved. Finally, I know that this has been a long post, but I hope it helps others to do a harness ghetto fix.
PS: Ignore the dates on the photos; I forgot to re-set them.
PPS: Here are two links with tailgate harness info which were of some help:
http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=82550
http://www.swedishbricks.net/faq/tailgate.html
Photo #1
Photo #2
Photo #3
Photo #4