Disintegrating wiring insulation in Litronics headlight assembly

[Gilles]

Laminar,

A few months ago my son and I ran into exactly the same issue (crumbling insulation with fully exposed wiring on one of the headlights) on his '02 VW Jetta that was originally sold on of the NE states.

The VW dealer was not even able to find the part number of this section of the harness, so we visit one of the imported car section of one of the large junk yards in the LA area and found a few cars with the harness section we needed in great shape, if I remember correctly we walked out of there with the connectors, harness and few odd extra parts for a grand total of $5.50 or so, and we spent way more on gas and lunch than the spares...

We swap them up with the damaged harness and everything was back in working order right away.

Woody may have the harness section you need

Originally Posted by particlewave

Liquid Plasti-Dip (the kind in a normal can, not spray can) works much better than liquid electrical tape. Paint it on with a small brush and do multiple coats. It's thicker and more elastic.

Did not know that. Excellent tip!

Originally Posted by Gilles

Woody may have the harness section you need

I was thinking about that, but it looked like the connector at the other end for the red/green/blue/black wires was built into the rear cap. I may check with Woody just to see what he has...

[rexcramer]

Let's hope that the rest of the wiring in our cars is more robust than that? That is down right scary looking.

I spent some quality time working on the headlight assembly this morning applying gratuitous amounts of liquid tape and replacing the the wires between the connectors from the back.

Liquid tape circus:


Replacement wires between connectors:


I used heat shrink tubing and the nylon mesh wire sleeving to keep the ends next to the connectors bundled and act as a strain relief of sorts to keep the flexing near the connectors to a minimum.

I carefully buttoned everything back up, reinstalled the headlight assembly, and...everything worked! Well, all the lights came on, and the Litronic lamps would tilt up when I switched the high beams on.

I'm not sure how long this fix will actually last, so I'm going to hedge my bets and look around for some donor harnesses in case I have occasion to go back in there to fix something.