[Johnny 216GSi]

How hard can it be?

Just make sure the neighbours are inside and their windows are closed before you start swearing

Or put your Santa costume on so they don't know who it is

[Johnny 216GSi]

Taping a stiff wire to the end before you remove it can help, as it then not only gives you something to pull the new one in with, but it can also help with freeing it if it snags along the way.

Actually, perhaps taping a sort of tapered section to the front of the plug may help getting it down the tailgate side pillar. It may also be possible to tape the plug to the loom at a right angle for the "pull" if the side-on cross section is smaller than the front-on one is. Depends how flat the wires bend I suppose.

Good luck John! (You're in all our prayers at this difficult time!)

[GTiJohn]

Thank you for all the helpful advice, especially the bit about the neighbours

My current idea is the tie a cord/string around each of the 3 connectors, to help feed them back to the right aperture, but build them up with tape into a cone-shape to give them the best chance of getting through. I'll take pics.

[Roverlike]

Just a note of warning. Wires are folded each time tailgate is closed. Regular wires with regular isolation becomes brittle. Over time inevitebly it will lead to another brake even much sooner since replacement loom spend some time on shelf and as time passes isolation becomes hard again.
From my experience only long lasting solution is to replace it with wire having flexible isolation like silicone one.

I did not opt for complete loom rellacement, I opted for soldering new pieces of ordinary wire and they broke couple of years after. Then I replaced them with flexible isolation ones and they are lasting till today.

[GTiJohn]

From my experience only long lasting solution is to replace it with wire having flexible isolation like silicone one.

I'll see if I can repair the original one this way once it's out of the car

[GTiJohn]

With the sun out earlier, I decided to swap the harness over.

It was a little easier than I thought it might be getting the lengths out and then back in and I needed to remove a couple more bits than I expected to - the tailgate spoiler, for example.

But I think I've found the problem....





The string method definitely helped and no swearing was necessary





I'll write up the process for a future edition of The Viking

[rjessett]

Is it a seperate harness john, body side?

[GTiJohn]

Is it a separate harness john, body side?

It's a separate harness that plugs in near the OS lights and up the E-post and down the side of the hatch - YMN101860, available from Motaclan

[cybercontroller]

Looking forward to reading your write up. Would like to think I might do a similar repair.

[Johnny 216GSi]

I'm taking credit for "the green and black wires" comment I made well before you found the problem.

EXACTLY the same fault on my R8 216 hatch. But I managed to do a hefty repair and shift the position of the wires a little so the (insulated!) joins were at the mouth of the rubber tubing on the body side.

Silicone grease in the rubber tubing. We'll wait and see how long that repair lasts, but it's been done for a good few years now.

Roverlike's comment about extra-flexible wires is a good one. Silicone covered wire is often found being used for test leads on multimeters, etc. I guess getting something very flexible with enough current carrying capacity may present a minor challenge, as these wires tend to have much thicker silicone outers so you're not getting the same current carrying capacity as standard PVC-sheathed cable, for the same outer diameter.

Edited: A quick Google of "extra flexible silicone power cable" came up with a couple of eBay links, with conductor cores up to 4mm2. So not actually that much of a challenge