Topic

I thought I'd share what happened to me at the weekend in the hope I can save someone else;
I've had a wiring loom meltdown due to a short in the loom at the point that it branches to the boot lid.
The culprit was the light purple/lilac wire which feeds the boot lid light. This, along with a couple of black ground wires had fractured at the point where they split from the main harness and eventually shorted.
Unfortunately for me the 15A fuse which I'd just changed, held fast and this wire was subjected to 10-15 minutes of full short-circuit current resulting in its complete meltdown along pretty much the full length of the harness along the passenger side and up behind the dash. I've not managed to explore further yet but I suspect it goes right up to the fuse. It wouldn't be so bad but the wire also melted itself to at least another half dozen wires and, down in the passenger footwell, where the loom was well insulted with foam, burnt thought to the cores of a few others.
So, if you've got a an early model MGF (mine is 1999) it might be worth stripping back the loom at the boot hinge and checking it out.

Unfortunately this is a common issues with all MGF's & TF's and was never solved at production level, both the TF's I have owned have had the same issue, maybe not as serious as a short but wires have broken and gone open circuit (loss of high level brake light) Not sure if it was sorted at production for LE500's, anyone know?

i have noticed my boot courtesy light not working when the boot is opened, i checked the high level brake light and that is also not working, so i'm guessing theres a broken wire in the loom by the N/S boot hinge, i will investigate this soon and add a few inches of wire, so theres a little more flex
I'm guessing this is a common problem ?

Badger wrote: wrote:

Unfortunately this is a common issues with all MGF's & TF's ......

and most every other MG and Rover.

I had the same problem almost a year ago, the damage sounds like it's the same.

This is what knackered really's car up too.

I had it on the green one but noticed it in time and resolved it.

Not only MG's - My boss's MBW M5 had it and the loom piece is like £250 or something! It fried his on-board computer thingy a bit too and now it reports lamp problems and other stuff....

Metcalfe wrote: wrote:

I had the same problem almost a year ago, the damage sounds like it's the same.

Looks depressingly familiar Guess what I'm going to be doing over the next few weekends!

Did you replace the whole loom or jus the damaged wires?

Mine went last weekend. Fortunately the only thing that happened was the instrument lights and the L/H running lights went out.
I stripped that area of the loom and repaired a broken ground wire but things are still a bit flaky so all of the kinked (kinky?) wires will be getting repaired this weekend. Fingers crossed!

Clearly a design fault...any ideas how to prevent this happening, the harness takes a sharp turn at the hinge point, maybe it could be re-routed.

Anybody here modded it ?

bensewell wrote: wrote:

This is what knackered really's car up too.

similar.. mine was an alarm fault that went barbecue down the loom.

before i even put a battery on the F i checked the boot loom and all was ok.

i did remove the lower clip that holds the loom to the hinge arm, shown brown in the above picture, this stops the sudden kink point from happening.

Thanks for the tip all. I think I will check mine out shortly.