Hi all

A heavy gauge black wire (which I presume is the ground wire) on the driver's side tailgate hinge of my 1992 RHD wagon has broken and is causing the centre brake light as well as the tailgate central lock not to work. I know it's this black wire that's causing the problems because when I temporarily reconnected them together by letting the frayed ends touch, I don't get the bulb out indicator warning when I use the brakes. When the connection is broken, the bulb out indicator appears.

Thinking that it's just too hard to undo the hinge, I thought I'd just reroute this tailgate ground wire.

Here's the puzzle:

When I connected a length of wire to the ground point for the right side tail light, to the ground point on the tailgate where the central locking ground wire (brown) joins up with what I think is the the ground wire that comes in from the hinge, in depressing the brake pedal, the bulb out indicator still appears. I then tried connecting the ground point for the right tail light to the bulb of the centre brake light itself and the bulb out indicator still shows (the bulb is good, I checked) and the tailgate central locking still doesn't work.

Does anyone have suggestions as to what's going on? I had thought "ground is ground".

The other question is:

Tracing the wire harness into the roof lining, I don't see the black heavy gauge ground wire at all with the 4 wire harness. Does the tailgate ground wire attach directly to the chassis at the main chassis side of the tailgate hinge only?

Thanks in advance of answers.

Regards
Lucast