Holy thread revival...
So I went to replace my glowplugs - the harness' plastic clips disintigrated in my hands & also noticed some bare wire showing through. Plugs came out fine though - no1 clean, no2 corroded, nos3&4 full of soot - assume they'd given up first).
Pulling the OEM harness apart was a bit surprising. 4 individual plug wires (rather than being spliced into each other, presumably so each one only handles only current from a single plug) of what seems quite thin wire (15 AWG?) get colletively jointed to a thicker main wire. That join is partly uninsulated-crimp (which didn't seem to capture all the wires), and then a lot of what I assume is conductive glue.
First I wondered if I could modify an aftermarket harness from another vehicle brand with similar cylinder/head spacing but then found some aftermarket repair plugs - see photo for part number. They're great - clip on to glow-plugs really firmly and dont have to get your fingers right down the bottom to pull them off again. Pays to shop around - prices vary by almost 100%.
So 4 of those (glue/shrink butt-joint crimp-connectors included), some spare 14 AWG wire, various heat-shrink & some split tube and I have a brand new harness. I cut off the old main wire/plug and soldered it to the new 4 glowplug-wires.... 4:1 joint was a bit tricky to solder nicely.
My learning is (i) measure carefully - dont want excess or stretched wires, (ii) dont get too carried away with heat-shrink otherwise the harness wont bend enough round corners to clip onto the glowplugs.
Not the hardest job, but satisfying.
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'95 VM XJ (died)
'96 4.0 LPG XJ (sold)
'01 VM XJ (survived)
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