No power to rear upper tailgate. SOLVED!!!

[TerminatorX5]

go to your first post, click on EDIT... if you have an option for ADVANCED EDIT, go for it... Then, you should be able to see your title - modify the text and save... see if it worked.. if not - then we will need some experts to chime in...

[Berko]

Originally Posted by TerminatorX5

go to your first post, click on EDIT... if you have an option for ADVANCED EDIT, go for it... Then, you should be able to see your title - modify the text and save... see if it worked.. if not - then we will need some experts to chime in...

Done! :-)

[puddinboo]

Originally Posted by Berko

Problem solved. Did some more investigating today and with the help of a decent torch and a magnifying glass, spotted a broken wire right in the middle of the sleeve. Socked it in penetrating oil which allowed me to slide it back into the body to give me a bit of room to effect a repair and discovered a total of four broken wires and about four or five more cracked.

Did the required repairs and her presto. All seems to be working again.

Phew! :-)

glad you got it fixxed ,so it was the rubber sleeve from body to top of tailgate then? flexing those wires all the time.

[Berko]

Originally Posted by puddinboo

glad you got it fixxed ,so it was the rubber sleeve from body to top of tailgate then? flexing those wires all the time.

It was indeed. An absolutely terrible design it is too. If I had hair, I'd have pulled it out long ago.

Ironically, it was only out of morbid curiosity that I went back to it today and took a second look (well, third actually) as I'd all but given up trying to solve it and was going to book it into my local dealers this week.

Of course with hindsight, that's really all it could have been. Four problems, only two of which were seemingly related but they all had one thing in common; the cable route.

[puddinboo]

i work on evevators with a travelling cables with about 30 wires in there and trouble shooting that is a pain ,you just hope you can physically see the brake before you have to start checking wire by wire ,very time consuming.
at least you didn`t have to take it in ,it might of costed ya few hundred dollars just to find the problem ,but that should be 1 of the areas they would look at first ,unless they rely on the programmers too much. dealers don`t always think outside the box as much as they should. hope I didn`t offend anyone here. I just speak by experiance with them and then I end up fixxing it myself because they couldn`t find the problem.

[bcredliner]

Good to hear you found the problem!

[admranger]

The E34 5-series had this same problem in the trunk wiring harness... You'd have thought BMW would have figured out better cable protection to prevent the work hardening of the copper wires/plastic insulation by now...

[Berko]

Originally Posted by admranger

The E34 5-series had this same problem in the trunk wiring harness... You'd have thought BMW would have figured out better cable protection to prevent the work hardening of the copper wires/plastic insulation by now...

You would indeed.