Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Electrical Connectors are driving me mad!

Over the years I have assembled a reasonable tool kit, and with help and advice (either from others here , or from the net) I will tackle most mechanical jobs , albeit more slowly than most, and get enjoyment from finishing them to my own satisfaction.

However I just can't seem to fathom the modern electrical connectors that all today's machinery uses in proliferation all over the car.

Over the last 2 days I have tackled a Vauxhall Astra inlet manifold change, and a VW Golf Mk 4 internal door seal replacement. On both of these jobs I hit electrical connectors that I just could not fathom out how they worked, and each one seems to be totally different to all the others. With the Astra we actually had to leave one (the electronic throttle module?) connected to the throttle body as I just could work out how to get them apart despite taking a 2 cuppa break.

Before I give up totally is there a resource somewhere that can be consulted to explain how each type works for ignorant mechanics like me?

They are a right bugger aren't they? There's usually a small catch or something that needs to be released but the mechanism for so doing can be remarkably obscure. On a couple I have found a plastic fork-type clip that needs to be withdrawn first, but I've never seen a comprehensive list of all the various types.

That's putting it mildly Tim, you are a master of the understatement.

Obviously designed by some young kid with designer stubble who's grown up with IT......................

What happened to bullet connectors.......
You know where you are with bullets.
And thick wires, none of this thin spaghetti stuff.

Whilst on the subject (ish): how does one remove the push button switches please?

I recall that there's a special tool which does it from the front?

Once you have ripped a few apart and worked out how they were supposed to work, you find yourself appreciating the ingenuity, or at least I do!

Need to ID the connector then download the data sheets showing how they work.

Absolutely! Proper cables and proper connectors. Someone did tell me once (it might have been Spanner Juggler) that if you were to wire up a modern car with old-style wiring there would be so much of it that a significant portion of the car's weight would be in the copper wires.

Well actually...back in 1983 when I was 26....and we had ONE Apple PC between the whole dept of 30 or us...

I was working as principal electrical design engineer working on Jaguar Project XJ40. There were two problems:

• Unreliability of the existing bullet and lucar connectors
• Weight of the harness in the vehicle

So we set about solving the problems.

Connectors used to either not go to together or when they did they pushed the pins back out of the sockets. So we added two features...positive latch and anti backout. The positive latch relies upon a ramp that snaps the connector together or pushes it apart if not fully home. Anti back out relies upon barbs in the connector housing and/or plugs at the rear where the cable enters.

We centralised control of functions to a black box and added relay boxes at each corner to switch the loads. That meant we could reduce the wires size down as they only connect light current signals not high current switching...

This was the first step towards the modern control systems which rely upon CAN etc but still use light current wires...

So blame me....

So it's your fault then. And no IT was harmed during the process.

I've got to ask.............................

Did you have designer stubble?