Golf 1.4 16v MK4 - frayed injector cables, wtf

[lost in espace]

I have a tenant at the mo who has a Golf. She was advised the injector wiring cables were frayed. Took the plastic lid off the engine and saw this:



Yes all 4 cables are shagged, and one in particular looks bad with just a few strands of wire remaining. I am unsure why this has happened as there is nothing to rub against it. It looks a bit tricky to get to the loom and anyway the cables are knackered quite close to the plugs so soldering looks tricky here.

The wires seem to head off into the loom in both directions and it looks tricky to sort, I wasn't going to start playing around with her car too much in case my repair disabled the car.

Is this a common problem with Golfs?

[thinfourth2]

Mice?

Seriously

The little buggers have munched some of the insulation on my car

[davepoth]

Some kind of rodent I guess. There's not much that'll do that otherwise - I shouldn't have thought you'd do that removing those plugs or taking the plastic cover off unless you did it hundreds of times.

[Matt_N]

I would say no rodent involved.

The wires going to the coilpacks on my Mk4 1.8T looked very similar.

Just looks like the outer sheath of the wire goes brittle over time and disintegrates. The tight bend in the wire doesnt help either, as a small split would soon get bigger. Bit of a bugger that the actual wires are frayed though.

[lost in espace]

Its going to be tricky to just stitch in an extra piece of good cable. The best bet might be to solder the wires themselves and then wrap insulation cable around them. It looks like a proper repair will be to cut the loom and replace the wires, then fix new cables. Expensive.

[Rich_W]

Eaasy repair. So long as you have some specialist tools. VW sell the wires with terminals on. So you'l need 4 of them. Some heatshrink type crimp connectors and the little rubber grommets. (4)

A pin remover tool will dis-engage the lock and then you pull the wre out hte back of the plug.

Or just pay a VW dealer to do it.

[lost in espace]

Thanks Rich.