Complete vehicle harness, except engine. Rodent damage on a new 760i. Bags are full of the wiring/connectors that get pulled through firewall/trunk/rear openings to prevent damage.

  • LemmyoutofhereOPEnglish
    11·
    1 day ago

    Complete body harnesses are all custom made to order only depending on options, so it takes a couple months to get one.

    • twinnie@feddit.uk
      42·
      1 day ago

      I still don’t understand why they’re so expensive? They’re just different lengths of wire.

      I want a rear door harness for my Land Rover but it’s like £230 and it only hooks up a wiper and central locking.

      • blarghly@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        24 hours ago
        1. Copper expensive.
        2. Wiring harnesses rarely fail/need to be replaced, which makes it a niche part.
        3. Even though they probably have warehouses full of spare wiring harnesses, oem manufacturers like to jack the price up because they know people will pay it - in particular, insurance companies don’t want to get sued/blamed/bad reviews for installing inferior third party parts, and so will pay whatever it costs to get OEM. Same with many mechanics.
        4. Aftermarket manufacturers, since they do tend to only manufacture the number of parts the market demands, do not benefit from economies of scale like OEM manufacturers, and will have much higher manufacturing costs per part for every step in the process. And since the OEM part is so expensive, they can still make a tidy profit selling a part that is less expensive but still quite expensive.
        5. It is typically very easy to replace any damaged wiring with generic wiring and connectors which are available for pennies at any auto parts or hardware store. So the people who are willing to pay the premium for OEM or OEM compatible wiring and connectors are typically also the sort of people to get sticker shock, shrug, and say “damn! Well, guess that’s how much it costs.” Or else they are “just so” people who absolutely must have exactly the right part on principle, even if it costs an arm and a leg.
        • LemmyoutofhereOPEnglish
          11·
          23 hours ago

          “5) It is typically very easy to replace any damaged wiring with generic wiring and connectors which are available for pennies at any auto parts or hardware store.”

          Not so much anymore. A large percentage of critical wiring is now “low resistance” circuits. They are very sensitive to resistance. That means we are only allowed to make a single splice per wire along its full length. So if a section of wire is missing, the entire wire must be replaced from end to end with new terminals. Those can sometimes be the full length of the car.

          • azertyfun@sh.itjust.works
            2·
            18 hours ago

            I’m not an electrical engineer, but there’s manufacturer recommendations and there’s “good enough for the job”. If I bought that car out of warranty, and had to splice a wire, would it actually matter? And if it did, couldn’t I just… use a thicker conductor and some high quality connectors?

            • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
              21·
              17 hours ago

              Upping the size of the conductor adds resistance to the circuit. The wiring in those harnesses are like 20-26 gauge. When you’re sending a signal (rather than just supplying power) that extra resistance causes all kinds of problems.

              If you’re making a repair with low resistance wiring, it’s pretty much standard practice to solder in a repair wire of the same gauge and conductor type. A butt splice will also add resistance to the circuit.

              You can do a lot of things with power feeder wiring that you can’t with low resistance signal wiring.

              • pishadoot@sh.itjust.works
                21·
                6 hours ago

                You can absolutely use a larger wire (lower gauge) and high quality splices to get a repair that doesn’t add any significant amount of resistance for this use case.

                If your wire diameter is larger then your resistance is lower, not greater (so 18-24 awg in your example, or equivalent in mm). Then you use low resistance splice methods, not a shitty Amazon butt splice.

                Not sure where you’re coming from. “Replace the entire wire” is the knuckle dragging, high labor cost low technical aptitude solution.

                If a rodent chewed through a ton of wires then yeah, you’re replacing the whole thing because it’s not cost effective to look for every nick and chew and patch them all. But a single short or nick? You can totally patch it, and saying otherwise just isn’t facts.

                • despoticruin@lemmy.zip
                  2·
                  6 hours ago

                  When you are dealing with high frequency signalling like that you introduce signal reflections when you change the geometry of the conductor. If you don’t account for that reflection in a design it can interfere with the signalling and introduce enough noise to stop reliably working. Splices that aren’t soldered connections to the same size of wire will all add just a bit of resistance, regardless of their size, and even solder will change the transmission profile of the wire slightly at high frequencies.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
          1·
          23 hours ago

          Copper isn’t that expensive. $6/lb = $480. Equivalent weight in Romex would be ~$700. $900 for shielded Cat 6.

      • CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        4·
        22 hours ago

        They’re handmade, apparently. Drives up the cost significantly, well beyond material cost. We’re pretty used to mass produced parts and wiring harnesses aren’t mass produced after the production run.

      • corsicanguppyEnglish
        56·
        23 hours ago

        I still don’t understand why they’re so expensive?

        To answer the question as written: Correct. You do not understand why they’re so expensive. I’m very confident in this answer because I see you said as much, and you’re the authority on what you understand.

        Glad I could answer your question as written. It feels good to help.