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My 1982 245 wagon needed several repairs to this through-the-hinge wiring shortly after I got it but before I knew much about Volvos or where to look for help. I got frustrated with the repeated costly shop repairs so I decided to look into the matter myself. The shop I had been taking it to was patching up the original wiring with a rig job of heat-shrink tubing. The rigidity of the tubing, it seemed to me, could never survive the repeated flexion of the hinge. I came up with my own fix, and so far it has stayed fixed. Here's what I did: The harness wires which pass through the hinges are made of very finely-stranded wire. Think "angel hair" pasta compared to stroganoff noodles. The thinner strands bend easier and are less resistant to terminal stress when being flexed. I surmised that the short length of my original hinge-harness that was actually getting flexed in the hinge had been thoroughly worn out, but there was still a good length of the same finely-stranded wire "upstream" from the hinge that hadn't done any hard duty at all. Upstream from the hinge, I extended each of the conductors about six inches by splicing in some lengths of ordinary multi-stranded wire. This allowed me enough length in the harness so that I could work some of the underworked "angel hair" finely-stranded wires downstream into the high-flex hinge area. The inch or so of wiring that passed through that hinge was not new, but it acted like new. Hope this helps!
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