Octavia Boot "open" light & central locking

[darrylg]

Well it was another successful weekend for me.

Another foray into the electrics of my 2005 Octavia MK1.

The problem was that when I opened the boot, the little light didn't come on inside the boot.  Plus, the dash light didn't show the boot was open.

The central locking would always re-lock the car after 30 seconds with the boot still open, because it didn't think the boot was even open.

 

This was a dangerous situation for me because I always load stuff into the boot after unlocking the central locking, and it meant I could easily accidentally lock the keys in the boot.

 

So after my previous successes with the electronic locking in the drivers door and passenger door, I decided I would tackle this problem.
I originally asked my local dealer to look at the issue about 3 years ago, and they said it would take too much effort to trace the electrical fault.

 

So, I started by taking the boot lid plastic off (I hate this because it's fiddly to get back on).

I checked the wire connector that connects onto the lock latch and it looked OK, but I wasn't getting any electrical output from the multimeter.

 

 

 

So I traced the wire as it went into the boot on the right had side (passenger side).

It runs down into the boot and connects into a connector block just above and behind the cd changer.

You need to get behind the material covering to see it.  Note that there's one screw type plastic thing that holds the material in place.

 

 

I could immediately see the famous blue stuff that indicates corrosion.  The wire I was tracing was brown/black and when I pulled it, it completely fell out of the connector block, along with more blue stuff.

It had corroded from the connector!

 

 

So, back out came the soldering iron.  I cleaned up the wire and soldered it onto the remains of the metal connector inside the block.

Connected it back up and the boot light started working along with the dash light.

Another success!

 

 

Total time: 30mins.

Amount of £ saved: probably hours in labor for diagnostics. 

[Toxicvrs]

Nice work!