Hello, I've had my XF for about a month and have started to dig into a wiring issue. Passenger side license plate lamp does not work. Ground wire is fine. I am getting 12 volts from the illumination module for pin 13 gray/yellow, nothing at the license plate lamp harness. Is there a common place where this wire breaks? If someone could provide a description of where the wires run from front to back and how to get access it would be highly appreciated.

 

Save your efforts if you can, run a wire between the two licence plate lamps and cut and insulate the one that does not work. just leave a pigtail on the bad socket and splice it into the good wire and insulate.

 

I had thought of that, but will that stop the "lamp out" though?

 

Is it possible the fault lies in the plug that goes into the light housing, check for power a couple of inches back from the plug.
Someone could have pulled the wire off the socket terminal.

 

That all checks out. Connector behind the socket looks good. No one ever dares to trace or run a new wire? (except me)

 

Joiin the good plug to the bad light, try the simple stuff first.

 

I am checking voltage with a multimeter directly at the connector. Ground wire to a ground source works. Is there a way to remove the wire from the connector?

 

Use a pin or darning needle and push it through the insulation and touch the wires inside, small pin will let the wire close up the hole but insulate with tape anyway.

 

I'm very surprised this isn't a very common issue. 4 broken wires in the passenger side grommet. Likely my rear defrost wasn't working, but will now. Used a wire tracer tool, but wasn't really necessary. My dad was in town and he wrote the electrical connector sticky on neons.org in 2007. Added an inch of wire to each, lots of soldering, marine heat shrink, a final wrapping of electrical tape and sealed with black rtv. It was a struggle to get the bottom part of the grommet back on, the secret is to remove the one black retainer from the headliner itself and you can get your hand in there and push up on the plastic piece, to put the lip of the grommet back on.

https://forums.neons.org/viewtopic.php?t=295960

 

Great info. Thanks for the pics. James

 

Good looking repair.

 

This is Tad's dad. Couple additions to add. The rubber convoluted section had to be cut to get access to do soldering and heat shrink. To get heat shrink far away enough to not get it to shrink in the wrong place from the heat needed to solder, you need a few inches of wire to slide the heat shrink away. The black defrost wire was broken very close to the bottom grommet. We probably didn't need to undo the bottom grommet, but didn't know it wouldn't help and we thought we could just slide everything up. That bottom grommet was almost impossible to get back on and we struggled with it longer than it took to do the soldering. The original wires may have been too short and stressed from opening and closing the trunk many times. We added an inch to each broken wire. We used 3M 33+ tape to wrap the wire bundle so it flexes as a single unit. The top grommet had to be zip tied because we cut it. The cut along the convoluted part was filled with ultra black rtv and we're letting it set 24 hours.
Any electrical malfunction in the trunk is most likely due to broken wires in the convoluted section. When you can't figure out why the lighting, defrost, or the spoiler won't work, this is where to look.

 

It may be preemptive to lengthen the wires before they break?

 

The black wire for rear defrost especially did seem quite short, however you have to cut the rubber grommet to get in there and do soldering. I am leaving my driver side grommet alone, presumably the wires aren't so short on that side? I would leave it alone until you get an issue with rear defrost or license plate lamp. The other two broken wires were brown ground wires.

 

You should do the heat shrink joints away from the flex point, the flex will now be concentrated at the end of the heat shrinks.
Lengthen the wires and keep the joints in an accessible spot, this may be under the roof liner.
You probably can do this without cutting the rubber boot, replace the roof fabric at the same time if needed.
This is not a quick fix if done properly.
I did a more detailed post but somehow it got erased, I could not be bothered to do it again but the basics are here.