TECH: passing wires via factory route

[Riptide]

Ok. I've seen this on a number of vehicles over the years. People put some sort of mod, whether it be additional speakers, video screens, lights, etc., and they either slaughter the waterproofing gromets and drill holes through them to run the wire, or they just run the wire between the door panel and the door body.

The former is a safety issue, the latter just looks tacky.

I recently needed to run wire from a power source under the dash to the doors on my car. So, following Drew's excellent door panel removal tutorial at the hopefully soon to be restored club4geclipse, I got the door panels off and set out to see how I could get the wires to run through the same location that the factory wires run through.

Most of this is nearly impossible to take pics of, so I'll do my best to describe.

The wiring harness for the door components runs through the side of the body to the door via a moulded two sided, hose connected,rubber grommet.
On the interior end, in the car, where the wire enters this grometous maximus is a simple rubber boot type fitting with a small split down the side. this increases in size to become the inside of the first grommet type piece. This grommet seals the interor from the outside (the location between the door and the body where water *can* get. On the outside, is the second part of the grommet, which then is continued into the corrugated hose looking rubber covering you see when you open your door. This meets another grommet on the door, and then inside the door is another boot type end which covers the wires.

The main difference is that on the inside of the door, the boot is then taped over with electrical tape that then spirals down the wiring harness towards the first split in the wiring harness.

The first step was to get the electrical tape off the portion of the harness inside the door. It's a bit of a cramped area, but it isn't impossible to do.
Once you have the tape off, you have to have a way to fish the wire through the hose. It's not a straight shot, nor is it a simple curve. It's more of an S curve. Normally you could just use wire, but being that you are dealing with electrical components, wire isn't such a good idea. You don't want to damage the wiring. After considering my options, the thought came to me to use a coat hanger, but no, made of wire. Wrong. Thanks to the wonders of modern plastic, we have plastic coat hangers.
I grabbed one of the plastic ones in the coat closet. It's got about a 7/16" (roughly 10mm) diameter on the bottom piece. I cut the bottom piece off as close to the ends as possible without having the plastic curve up at the end due to the design of the coat hangar.
I then used a fine file to round off the cut ends so they were smooth (well, as smooth as the file would get them).
From there I put the hangar piece into a vice, to hold it, and drilled a hole through the center of it (if you *really* want to know the bit # I can get it for you, but it was roughly 1/3 the diameter of the plastic rod).
the resulting object is basically a huge blunt plastic needle.
The coat hangar I used was made of relatively flexible plastic, and I then threaded the wire through the end, leaving at least a foot on the end of wire that went through the needles eye. This prevents you from getting nearly all the way through, and then finding out that you lost the wire somewhere inside.

I then pushed the needle into the boot where the wiring harness traveled into the grommet connector on the inside of the door. From there, it was a matter of pushing and pulling lightly, including wrestling with getting the end of the needle through the S curve. However it worked very well. Once it was through, the wire was easy to adjust and move to the location/length needed.

Looking back I suspect it would have gone fast if I had:
1) used some sort of non-conductive lubricant to get the plastic to not create so much friction.
2) I popped out the grommet on the door side (if you have to do this, you push it *in* to the door compartment. It would probably have gone back into place a lot easier if I'd added a tiny amount of lubricant to that as well. However I'm not sure what type would have been good for that.

once everything was in place, I took some electrical tape (a small roll) and re-taped the boot and wiring harness as best I could to what it was before.
This part is a pain in the *** being that you pretty much have to do it with one hand and can't see a thing.

I'll snap some pictures later and update the thread if it is of use to anyone.

Pics:

blurry pic of the grommet thing between the door and the body of the car


blurry pic of where the grommet comes into the interior of the car itself


pic of the tools with short descriptions of what they are for:

[jb4g]

this is great info, wish I had this a couple months ago. Count me as one that ran it through the fender than across the door jamb, I didnt want to drill through the firewall, lazy I know

[Riptide]

Better to run under the door jam and into the door panel than drill

drilling = bad.