I tackled the job today and it went smoothly, thanks to all the help from the board members. A few things I discovered:

- a ladder works well holding up the tailgate. I did one hinge at a time and it worked perfectly.
- when pulling the harnesses, I attached a string so it was easier to pull the new harness through
- the driver's side of the tailgate was a PITA go get the harness wires pulled through. I ended up clipping the bullet connector off and reattaching a new one once I pulled it through. The passenger side was much easier and seemed to have more room to thread the wires.


Here are some pics of the morning adventure.

My ladder was not quite tall enough, so I improvised:



I had never pulled the headliner before, and it proved to be fairly easy. Great design:



The driver's side harness had been replaced by a previous owner, but had failed. You can see there is not much white sealant around the holes:



Here you can see the old harness after I pulled it through, with a string attached for the new harness:



Driver's hinge ready to go back in with both a new ground wire (blue) and harness and black crap:



This is the underside of the passenger hinge. The extra wire mystery is explained. A previous repair for the broken ground just added a pair of ground wires with a couple of bolts through the hinge ribs. No black crap in their either so I'm no sure how the water stayed out. I stole some from the tailgate for the reinstall:



I drilled a small hole in the metal to attach the ground so it would be hidden by the headliner. I did this on both sides:



And I secured each ground wire to the grounding points in the tailgate:





That's all. Everything I could test worked great, including the center light and wiper. It should not be long before we get a good rain and I see if the hinges sealed back up properly.

Thanks again for all help.

Thank you for the pointers. I now see the extra thick black wires are ground wires attached to the hinges. I plan to replace the wire with some #13 test lead wire since it's meant for this type of application. I may either pry the hinge crimps apart as Art did or run the ground wires into the roof and tailgate and find attachment points inside those places.

On the passenger hinge, there is a smaller single black wire that is broken. I think this could be the center brake light wire, as this was probably an US-specific modification. Thanks Derek for pointing this out. I'll probably need to get a smaller gauge wire than the #13 I have so it fits through the hinge and holes.

I plan to remove the tailgate and hinges, clean things up nicely and put it all back together.

What is the best way to ensure I don't have any leaks where the hinges attach to the roof and tailgate? Do I need new gaskets (hard to find?)? Special kind of sealer?

Thanks again for all the help.

Unlike Ted, I have seen the effect of omitting the ground wire in the repair.

But not from the driver's seat. About the only way you see it is when following the wagon, the license plate lights wink as the car encounters imperfections in the road surface.

May not be important, but it seems worth my time to repair the wires -- although I recognize there's no IPD plug-and-play solution short of new hinges.





I picked the crimp apart and put a new piece of wire back in the crimp, rather than trying to replace the staked terminal. Soldered.




--
Art Benstein near Baltimore

By the time a man realizes that his father was right, he has a son who thinks he's wrong.

the black wires to which you refer are short and create a ground between the both sides of the hinge and the cars body.

they are riveted into each side of the hinge as you will see.

i seldom bother fixing this wire when i redo the harness's and to date has not made a difference.

also rather than buying new harness's it is much cheaper and easier to splice lengths of similar gauge wire using butt connectors and a GOOD linesman crimp tool.

this way you add an extra 8 inches of wire and be ready for the next time it breaks