Rear hatch-no power!

[drkailey]

Been lurking here for years, 1st post.

Weird problem with the hatch on my '09 GTI.

The electric latch release, rear wiper and reverse lights don't work. The dash indicator reports "rear left (right) reverse light not working".

Was intermittent a few weeks ago now they don't work at all.

Pulled the trim and harness boots and don't see any evidence of bad wires or leaking washer fluid. Jumpered pins on the latch release and it works fine electrically.

Any ideas before I take it to the Stealer?:thumbdown:

A buddy has VagCom, would that show anything?

 

[gerrywac]

I would strongly suspect that despite external appearance one or more of the copper stranded wires have broken within the plastic sheath

It is quite common with wires generally that are subjected to repeated flexing and the Mk5 seems pretty notorious to this type of failure in the rubber boot sections between body and openings. Drivers door seems to be very common presumably due to most use. A broken wire will often give an intermittent fault as the break is flexed and re-flexed and the wire touch or not

You could try turning everything on and then flex individual wires to see if that yields results but it is rather hit and miss. A cheap test meter on ohm function and test each wire in the faulty herness section end to end is the old tried and tested method

I doubt that VagCom/VCDS would give detailed info, generally wiring problems give a fault code for a component with a low/implausible signal comment attached

 

[drkailey]

Found it! Was exactly the same problem detailed in this post, I just didn't dig deep enough:

http://www.golfmkv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=166318

Ended up just splicing in a piece of wire, and taping it up.

Seems to be an issue, hopefully this helps someone else...

 

[spooler]

I wonder why this does not happen to other cars, just the golf. Do our cars have cheap wiring??

 

[GTI lover all over again]

it's more common than you think!http://www.golfmkv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=166318&highlight=rear+hatch

 

[gerrywac]

It is a common problem with pvc insulated cables as commonly used in car and house wiring. The pvc has a plasticiser included to make it flexible but they become less flexible with age. If I have to work on house wiring you get an idea of the age of the cabling from how easily the plastic cuts and strips

I don't think its particular toVW or the Golf5

 

[zrickety]

I agree with the aging and constant bending, but every time I see these posts it looks like the wires are rubbing or hitting an edge on the body. I've owned a number of high mileage cars and this is definitely more common on the Golf.

 

[Braden09Rabbit]

Same thing just happened to my 09 Rabbit, but when i soldered the wires back together it didn't fix the no power to the hatch issue. I was wondering if there was maybe a fuse i may have blown in the process, anyone know of anything i can try now? Thanks ahead of time! -Braden