Wiring: To repair, or replace?

[zero]

This is more aimed at the dealer guys, do you replace door wiring harnesses when a wire breaks or just repair the wire?

Today a co-worker (another apprentice level tech) was having an issue with a power window not working, Long story short there was a broken wire in the door jamb, because they never break there /s. So he fixed it, properly, running a new wire through the jamb area and soldering it on both ends. Anyway his journeyman comes back from lunch as he’s putting it back together and says that the whole door harness needs to be replaced. So instead of taking 20 minutes to repair 1 wire, this guy’s saying that on a 2003 CRV we should be replacing a whole assembly. So we’re talking later and he’s telling me this and all I could think is how is that reasonable on an ’03.

I understand that if it’s covered under warranty you can’t just go off all half-cocked soldering everything because they don’t pay for that. But maybe it’s just me thinking it’s crazy to not just fix a single broken wire in a door jamb on a 12 year old car, maybe it’s because I worked in an aftermarket shop were the suggestion of ordering a $200 harness would get you fired when you could fix it for $20.

Topic

[James O’Hara]

Preventative maintenance. Sometimes warranty actually cares enough to use that terminology though depending on where you work it is a blue moon. If one wire broke how long before the rest do? They are all right there with the same number of flexes on them. They are almost always the same gauge so how long before the rest go. That is the reasoning. If it is under warranty a lot of manufacturers do not like people splicing into wires because 3/4 of them do not know what a proper wire repair looks like.

With all that being said aftermarket is different from dealer. Could you fix it for 20 bucks sure. Lets do some simple math with labor though. Lets say it pays 1 hr in an aftermarket shop it might be 60-80bucks in a dealership it is at least $99. So $119 for once if one other one breaks it is another $119. So that is $240 or you pay $299 and not have to worry about it for however long it lasted before if not longer.

Sometimes you have to think about it like that problem is when theservice writers don’t know how to explain it like that.

[Andrew Phillips]

I haven’t worked in a dealership since 1993, so things may be a little different now. But probably not with this issue. At my shop it was considered preferable to replace parts than try to repair them, including wiring. That was primarily due to how service is billed and paid for (soldering a wire was billed as straight time versus R&R of the harness would be book time and parts income). The only instances where repairing the wiring would have been preferable is if the harness was not available for replacement. Generally, the shop prefers to replace rather than repair. Not only for the billing aspects, but because of repair quality and consistency (let’s face it, some techs just can’t solder very well).

[Nelson]

I’m a Tech for MINI Cooper and we’re not allowed to perform any type of wire repairs unless instructed by the manufacturer. If you perform a wire repair and something happens like a fire then the tech/shop will be held accounted for. If the manufacturer instructs to perform a wire repair then there liable.
BTW soldering is not recommended to use on a wire repair. It creates high resistance. I’ve soldered wires on my personal vehicles and still no problems till this day.

[Andrew Phillips]

[quote=”TYLover92″ post=139194]BTW soldering is not recommended to use on a wire repair. It creates high resistance.[/quote]
Soldering, when done properly, shouldn’t cause any resistance at all. You can use an ohmmeter and measure across a proper solder joint. You should get zero ohms, or pretty darn close to it.

[Mike]

I’ve repaired broken door harness wires in many Mitsubishi Endeavors. Actually, I’ve repaired more wiring problems than I can even remember. I can pretty much remember every wiring harness I replace because the problem is usually pretty memorable if it calls for replacement of a whole harness. DaFirnz, your thoughts on this are logical, and I think this ‘journeyman’ (what does that even mean?) seems to be out of touch with reality.

[none]

In short; you’re damned if you don’t and damned if you do.

Before you have to jump into the shop’s policies and politics of any wire repair, do that thorough visual inspection. I’d want to know why that wire broke. If it was an issue of wire chafing on the body, then the number of chafed wires can decide whether to replace or repair. Burnt, melted harnesses tend to make decisions for you. Single wire breaks that happened from flexing are a crap shoot. Some harnesses get one while some get as many as they can. Bad repairs that aren’t your bad repairs…well….umm….yeah.

I don’t entirely know what right or wrong is in any of these scenarios, so I’ll just tell you what I consider right for me. I give the customer the option to repair or replace when I feel I can. Then they’re damned if I don’t or do. But, I also give them the time to understand the choices they’re making. Make sure they know that even good repairs can be a crap shoot for other broken wires we just can’t see yet. I might reserve the right to change my mind. What I mean in saying that is I might tell the customer to expect to pay a larger bill to replace, but I’ll still see what I can do to make it a smaller bill with repair. The customer’s wallet might dictate what happens in spite of shop rules and technician ability anyway. Burnt/melted harnesses don’t get customer consideration; only the larger bill. Cobble jobs might get the customer option to repair depending on how bad the cobble job is.

From there on, it’s on me to do my job right.

Luckily, I’ve never had to work for Mini so I’ve always been blessed to make my own choices in those wire repairs. If the journeyman has no actual authority in how you repair that Honda, make your own choices depending on your comfort with your skillset and tooling.

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