[Jungle_Jim]

Hi all

The short section of wiring in the drivers door for the central locking - which connects to a grey 3-pin connector inside the door - is in very poor shape, with the insulation crumbling off in places. It seems to crack up in the areas which were flex pivot points - it's fine where it was held straight and stationary. Rare for a 240 this bit of wiring seems poorly thought out.

I am replacing the sections with some 16AWG flexible cable which I originally bought to make up the looms that go through the dreaded tailgate hinges (wire with lots of fine strands, so it's flexible and won't fatigue and break quickly), but this driver's door wiring has been more of a pain in the &%£@ than expected...

The original cabling in this central locking wiring is also a type of very fine, flexible cable (same stuff as used in the tailgate hinges). The strands are so fine that it's really hard to get solder onto. If you cut it at a point where it's bright copper it takes solder, but if it's had any exposure to the elements, once there's a small bit of oxide on it, you have to keep applying abrasives to make clean copper surfaces that will take solder and this gets laborious because there's so many strands.

My questions are:

1 Have others here had similar problems with this fine wiring stuff regarding splicing into it? Maybe crimping connectors would be a way to avoid the soldering difficulties, but with this door, there's not enough room for the sections of bulky, straight wiring that crimp connectors would cause. With wiring I usually prefer to solder then insulate with heat-shrink and tape.

2 Are there other areas around a Volvo 240 (mine's a 92 estate) with this or other types of wiring where the insulation perishes and disintegrates?

What a barrel of laughs this is turning into.

Thanks
John