tgreese wrote: ↑Sun Feb 04, 2024 10:43 am
Suggest you run each wire inside vacuum tubing, and make a bundle of each individually sheathed wire with zip ties. Vacuum tubing has a thick wall meant to prevent collapse under vacuum. The silicone wire insulation is more flexible than PVC (vinyl), but I suspect it is no tougher. Good for things like test leads. You could source wire with teflon insulation that is very tough, but it's not cheap. IMO vacuum tubing (cheap) over new vinyl primary wire (also cheap) would be better. I'd want the bundle of wires to be stiff and bulky so it could not be pinched in the tailgate jamb.
Well I tried your good idea... but couldn't get it all to fit properly.
After disconnecting the wires underneath, here is what you need to package once it's pulled up through the tailgate sill area.... (love the OEM duct tape that was covering the factory ground splice!!)
Installed vacuum lines on the wires to help protect them but the whole assembly just started to get too bulky...
It barely fit back in the oval hole and would not move smoothly... so it just created a different interference issue.
At least the wires weren't likely to get damaged though.
Pulled the whole thing apart (again) and removed the vacuum lines... carefully sandwiched the wires between two 1.25" strips of clear plastic to help insure that they held a flat shape even after tape was applied. This also was intended to allow the harness to somewhat find it's way into the rear cross-sill hole as the tailgate was closed.
Final Shot: You can see a bit of daylight around the new harness showing that it ended up pretty compact and flat. The entire thing was carefully wrapped in Tesa tape to give it a nice finished look.
So that's my temporary solution for now. Really didn't want to go this far down the rabbit hole in the first place.... and by rights, I should still do this same exercise on the passenger side harness because it is even MORE destroyed and pinched than the driver side one was....
Anyway... thanks for brainstorming with me on this one. Appreciate the input!
-G