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hi my bruthas in volvomania- you were all very helpful in my recent conundrum with the brake light crapout. brake tail lights and abs light work fine. but 3d or high level brake light no soap . 3d brake light should go on with the tail brake lights. enough safety to roll up and down US1 and stinking creek but want to remediate it. heres what i have trouble shooted so far this am : 1. checked bulb in 3d light, good , new correct 1156. 2. #7 fuse ok and contacts always hot 3. both tail brake lights working properly (replacing bulb failure relay corrected that). 4. checked wiring inside hatch(took off inspection panel)all looks ok clean and tight. 5. sockets in tail lights and wiring ok, clean and tight. 6. bulb failure dash light still on if i turn on headlights or step on brake. 7. rear license plate lights ok, work. wondering if there is another brake light rely but dont see it in diagrams. hoping for your best advice what to do now sages. will feel very dumb if the answer is obvious. thanks tons oldduke
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Hiya Uncle Old Duke!
The Swedish Revenge with your lighting, rwar hatch / trailgate hinges, and such, all at once!
Yep, the rear hatch / tailgate harnesses.
Also, inspect both hinges for wear. The hinge pin pulls through the roof (front) side of the hinge. The rear hatch sags and the bottom lip of the rear hatch rests on the sill. Wears through painted finish and can cause rust in time.
Viewed from the the side, the rear part of the hinge, secures to the rear hatch / tailgate appears to make contact with the roof.
Look at the wire passing through the hinge with hatch up and down. You may see a break. Has no garage, ladder, or tree branch to secure an open tail gate while futzing with the rear hatch / tailgate hinges and the wire harnesses that travel through them.
You can replace the wire sections or make new harnesses from the old harnesses. If you mean to preserve the wire harness route through the hinges, use the wire type that your other responders suggest. Or use the OEM Volvo wire harnesses.
I used braided copper alloy conductor in high temp durable insulation in a few prior rear hatch repairs in the twentieth century on 145 (much simpler) and 1970s 245.
Anyhoo, photo essay of my effort on the 1990 240 DL (li'l red) Wagon with some parking lot suffrage (wants garage) with not friendly passerby looks this past August 2017.
Images are restricted to 1000 pixel width. Source image file is in the BrickPix in the technical category.
Here goes:
While made rather okay, unsure how long the bright, coarse, stranded copper conductor would last. The stranded copper conductor is stiff and seems unsuitable for spanning a hinged gap ... I cheaped out.
Okay, I copped out here. With nothing to support the rear hatch / tailgate, here's how I routed it.
Swedish Baklava decided on the same route, yet dressed up the wire route, put into a loom, and used stand-offs adhered to the door and rear hatch glass(?). Can't find his post yet.
Left side unibody to rear hatch span.
Right side unibody to rear hatch span.
Heavy duct tape under the rear hatch panel to cover the sharp sheet metal edges and provided compression (and some harness strain) relief.
View into the cargo area from the rear seat.
Original parking brake center console. Yet I did not break it. Found it that way one day.
Replaced it well over a month ago with one I'd had in a box for years.
There were no failures, yet the failing insulation and unusually cool August weather motivated me to complete this task finally.
I replaced the hinges with new, or recently replaced, by date and condition, from a wrecked golden 1993 240 Wagon at a North Portland salvage yard while I was in Vancouver, WA in 2006.
The hinges on the 1990 240 DL (li'l red) Wagon were shot as the hinge pins had pulled through the front half unibody roof-side hinge material rather far. Yet these OEM hinge golden volvo replacements have held up well and show no hinge pin sag or wear. Also new gas struts from that same golden Volvo 240 do great!
And now I regret leaving Spokane. St. Louis sucks.
Questions?
Hope that halps yooooooooo.
Antifungal Boyeeee (Clotrimazole, Terbinafine, and more. To the clinic.)
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Give your brickboard.com a big thumbs up! Way up! - Roger Ebert.  
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The word you're thinking of using won't be strong enough for the real trouble if it is what I suspect...
Tail Gate Harness
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Art Benstein near Baltimore
Q. What occurs more often in December than any other month?
A. Conception.
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hi arty b- didnt suspect that nor have any tipoffs. if it is the harness , how do you diagnose it ? looked in the hatch when i took the panel off it and saw no corrosion, broken or disconnected wires. earlier a wire was spliced into a broken one at the hinge to energize the license plate lights which had stopped working. when you say harness i surmise you mean the bunch of wires that start under and go through the left hinge on top of and then into the tailgate. if so it appears the pia causing bad words would be splicing the wires there at the hinge that typically break after many years of back and forth bending. should i be prepared to cuss heinously. appreciate your further insight . thanks tons oldduke
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Yes, the harness(es) go through the hinges. My notes say the wire for the high-mounted brake lamp uses the left hinge, like that for the defroster and tag lighting. The right side has wiring for the central locking and washer/wiper.
If you go by the wiring diagrams I posted in No Brake Lights under the ABS indicator thread, there's a discrepancy between the pictorial and the wiring diagram. It shows Brown/Black used in the '92, but still shows the Blue/Black in the pictorial at the lamp. Blue/Black was the color in '91, so I suppose this is one of the common editing mistakes in the factory manual detail pages.
Now it is time for you to cuss yourself for only fixing the one wire for the tag lamps at the time. To reassure yourself this is the issue, just look into the hinge with the gate closed to see the damaged wiring. Then open it.
To prove it is the issue, you'd need to do similar tracing as you did to fix the bulb-out relay, checking for juice where it connects above the headliner, and again inside the tail gate.
There are four approaches to repair I can think of. I cuss with #3.
1) Buy Genuine Volvo replacement harness. Cuss the price, but get the longer-lasting wiring, using the high strand count conductors and silicone insulation.
2) Buy Aftermaket replacement harness. Cuss yourself in a few years when you need to do it again.
3) Splice in some scrap wire on one end of each harness and pull good portion of original cable through the hinge. Cuss yourself perhaps, for not having a complete collection of wire splicing supplies.
4) Run the wires out the headliner and into the tail gate without putting them through the hinge. Add a ground wire, because those in both hinges are broken. Let others cuss you for doing a schlock job on a beautiful Swedish Wagon, but smile and let it roll off.
Actually, I can think of a fifth approach re-purposing a defroster wire you don't need in S. Florida and probably won't miss on Tobacco Road, but I can't give you the benefit of any experience doing that. The defroster actually uses two of the wires in tandem to double the current carrying capacity.
--
Art Benstein near Baltimore
Q. What separates "60 Minutes," on CBS from every other TV show?
A. No theme song.
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hi arty b- you have given me much guidance about freelance cussing on volvo repairs. most forums would expel you the first time you dropped an f sharp or place you on probation. the brick bunch seem generous and allow at least 2 2d chances. btw are bad words tolerated in your driveway? have solved wire problems on tag lights and 3d brake light system. broken hinge wires both times. so looks like easy driving , no coppers, no rear end collisions. only exception remains vulgar gesturers at my slow stop light launches. no known remedy for that . have to ask my engineer friend from our rutgers days if there is a better design to replace that hinge setup. easy way out would be no electrics in the hatch itself and put 3d brake light in the back edge of the roof. oh well enough of engineering 101. appreciate your wise help . thanks tons oldduke
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Run another ground wire to check electric circuit.
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hi arty b- read your article very carefully. good very good. thought of a short cut based on the assumption that one of the wires with the broken ends in the hinge is the hot wire for the 3d brake light. here is what i propose for your sought after sage critique: since i have much wire in balls in a junk box in the garage; find one that is in good shape and the same size/ gauge, cut a long piece and snake it through the hatch from the offed panel, pull through the hole at the receptacle unit where the bulb is and with a push on connector connect it to the blade on the receptacle. take the other end and snake it back to the broken 3d brake light wire in the hinge if i can find that wire and there is enough slack in the wire to splice the new wire to it. what do you think or no soap? possibly i will have to go through the headiner with the wire which will make the 245 look like a bohemian rig from woodstock and cause many unkind smartass remarks. what a design- engineer must have gone to harvard. thanks tons oldduke
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Does this appear as a 'bohemian' rig from woodstock?
Had I a ladder or some other way to secure the rear hatch / tailgate, I would have purchased Volvo OEM third brake light right and left rear hatch / tailgate harnesses for 1990 240. Or bought the Volvo OEM harnesses from Tasca Volvo Parts.
Or, using a like fine braided or as with Volvo OEM, a fine stranded alloy conductor suitable for the application, in appropriately rated (& UN resist) insulation, and choice sheathing, I would have fashioned up some harnesses for replacement through the hinges as I'd done before.
So, I went with cheapie MTC and holed it through the liner as you see.
Swedish Baklava did the same thing, yet his solution is more elegant using loom and standoffs.
Works. Yet in all instances of this task, I performed the replacement before broken wire shorts at the rear hatch / tailgate hinge would take out the bulb failure sensor.
The center console in the cargo bay was broken and I replaced it with a spare.
Problem is, I did not break that center console, frail as the plastic was. I found it that way, even though I keep the doors locked when the Volvo 240 is not in use.
Hope that helps.
Poor Poor Nephew.
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Give your brickboard.com a big thumbs up! Way up! - Roger Ebert.
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hello to my poor nephew kit g- yes that does look like a bohemian rig from woodstock.just like in 69 todays punks ask me why i dont run my 245 off a cliff like in the movies. back in aug 69 ran my junker 62 chevy and 2 known radicals up to woodstock(actually the clambake was in bethel ny). saw some of the worst looking cars in my life there(overcrowded over 100 degrees raining every 5 minutes and malodorous, wild women cooking sausages on hibachis). anyway heres what i did to solveproblem- spliced in new wire to broken hot wire in hinge and snaked it through hatch opening to 3d brake light. spliced in a 2d wire from broken ground wire in hinge to body wire screw next to the left tail light sockets in spare tire well. all now works and coppers wont bother me, except when i turn on headlights, bulb sensor light(new sensor) comes on. not sure what causes that. however correcting brake lights now seems to have allowed the sensor light to stay off when i use the brakes. btw before you ask, did see joe cocker and country joe but missed gracie of the airplane. bet you dont remember country joes big hit. keep the faith and i look forward to your comments on my cheesy repair. thanks tons oldduke
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"The defroster actually uses two of the wires in tandem to double the current carrying capacity"
How about in parallel, rather than is series (tandem)?
I have owned a 245, and replaced all the wires crossing the tailgate hinges. I used fine stranded wire, called MTW (Machine Tool Wire). That was about fifteen years ago, and I don't remember anything about tandem or parallel wires to the defroster.
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john
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"How about in parallel, rather than is series (tandem)? "
Absolutely correct John. You know I've had it wrong forever, thinking tandem meant the two horses were pulling abreast, and not one in front of the other? I even imagined a competing fault-tolerant computer maker, Tandem, was named after its parallel processing power advantage.
Yes, parallel. The wire in my '89 is original, having its practical maximum of two repairs made. The wire is 413-44. That is 7 groups of 59 strands of 44 AWG wire with that silicone rubber insulation that rots.
In that '89 there are two cables each with four conductors. At the left side, two run in parallel to supply the heavy needs of the defroster grid, and the remaining two run the tag lights and the high mounted brake light. On the right, one works the washer, one the wiper motor, and two for the central locking actuator.
Could be before '86 there wasn't a third brake light, and possibly no central locking*, leaving (in my theory anyhow) only 4 wires necessary. The grounds are just jumpers across the hinges, and my opinion is those are probably the first to go. Once gone, everything depends on the metal-to-metal hinge and latch to get returned to ground.
Edit: Wiring diagrams show central locking in the wagons back as far as '81, done the same way throughout the years, on the right side.
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Art Benstein near Baltimore
Two Innuit people sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it, too.
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I see another goof where I mention wiring for the washer. Not sure on the '92 with flush glass, but on my '89 the washer motor is up front behind the right headlamp, delivered to the rear window by a rubber hose.
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Art Benstein near Baltimore
Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.
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