Hi All

Had problems yesterday morning with a flat battery. My Dad's had a look and found that the fan at the front of the engine bay is continiously running.. hence the flat battery. On further inspection he's found that one of the wires in the three pin connector has worn away with what he suspects to be engine vibration.

He's left with little option at the moment but to solder the wire again but would like to try and take the connector apart to get a good connection on the wire.. anyone got any experience of this?

If it helps it's a 55 Plat Fabia VRS with 47000 on it and only 5 month out of warranty.

What's it been touching?? I'd be tempted to go and chop a plug off a scrapped one and splice it in rather than try and save that. They plug id the same of Mk4 TDi Golf's and the like so it shouldn't be to hard to track one down.

Hiya Phil

It looks like the three wires that lead into the housing have been rubbing against eachother.. i think we're managing at the moment but it's a right pain.

I agree with previous post ,you would be better getting a clean secondhand one.Remaking the 3 connections by twisting the wires together ,soldering,and then put 'heatshrink' over each join.

If you are not good at soldering make the join by using some male and female 'bullet' crimp on connections (get the correct size RED which is for 1.5mm cable diameter). Strip the insulation back about 10mm.You need a pair of crimp pliers to crimp the connector to the cable,making sure you use the correct plier size to crimp . All three joins need wrapping as one with self amalgamating tape to stop water ingress. Ordinary electrical tape will unwind itself over time.

I believe 'Maplin' do crimps,tape ,and crimp pliers.

Dont use those awful 'Scotchlock' things ,they only connect by a very small area by piercing the insulation,and are unreliable,even more so when wet.

I agree with previous post ,you would be better getting a clean secondhand one.Remaking the 3 connections by twisting the wires together ,soldering,and then put 'heatshrink' over each join.

If you are not good at soldering make the join by using some male and female 'bullet' crimp on connections (get the correct size RED which is for 1.5mm cable diameter). Strip the insulation back about 10mm.You need a pair of crimp pliers to crimp the connector to the cable,making sure you use the correct plier size to crimp . All three joins need wrapping as one with self amalgamating tape to stop water ingress. Ordinary electrical tape will unwind itself over time.

I believe 'Maplin' do crimps,tape ,and crimp pliers.

Dont use those awful 'Scotchlock' things ,they only connect by a very small area by piercing the insulation,and are unreliable,even more so when wet.

Just one thing to add "stagger" the joining points to make the rework less bulky and less liable to breaking in the future. If you are trying to be/get any good with soldering, slide on a short length of heatshrink tubing, tin both ends of each lead and then solder them together then slide the heatshrink down and shrink it using maybe a hairdrier - then as said wrap all cables with some proper tape.

Guys

Thanks very much for the great replies. My Dad's very handy with these kinds of things as he's a Forklift Truck Engineer. He managed to sort the connection out and did use some heatshrink. We had it up and working about 12 lunchtime and i've had it out twice since.

All looking good...

Thanks

Chris.