Dear B.B.,

Hope you're well and stay so!

The problem with the "bullet" format wire terminals is that they're secured to the connector housing with some sort of polymer "bushing", that goes over the wire/wire terminal and fits snugly into the housing. This polymer deteriorates with time.

When one tries to separate both sides of the connectors' housings - so that an oxidation-dissolving chemical can do its work - the bushings crumble. That leaves the wire terminals loose inside the connector's housing. Each wire's terminal then has to be matched to its mate in the remaining half of the connector

Under the steel brace - that connects the driver's side strut tower to the firewall - there's an eight-wire connector (C54 on the 1994 Volvo "Green Book' Wiring Diagram). There's precious little slack in the wiring harness, so manipulating the wire terminals is not easy. The hood's hinge makes side-access hard, even with the hood in the full, upright position.

Even so, having removed one of the now-useless gray terminal housings, I was able to mate the wires. I have small hands, so had just enough work room. A large-fingered mechanic will need to use a mini-needle-nose pliers to grip each wire terminal connector and push it into place.

I used a cloth-reinforced sticky tape to make a "boot" over the end of the wiring harness, where the now-separate wires each goes into the remaining connector housing. I hope this "boot" limits humidity-laden air's access to the wiring terminals.

In all this, I'm glad that corrosion had not bonded the wiring terminals: the connector housing halves separated easily. Had the wiring terminals corrosion-bonded, separating them would have involved applying a corrosion-remover and then one-by-one trying to break the corrosion bond.

It might be easier to cut-off the terminals and solder the wires, having first slid heat-shrink tubing over each wire. I'm not sure there's enough slack in the wiring harness to allow this to be done. Even if there's enough slack, the task would take several hours to do, because of difficult access.

Removing the hood would help. A helper is needed to do that. Removing and then re-aligning the hood - which I've never done - is not likely to be easy.

Hope this helps.

Yours faithfully,

Spook