Since I am not allowed to classified forum sections, I will post a little info on a tiny "project" I did. So...
Tailgate opening from the inside
Since we intended to sleep in the car, we realized it might be annoying not to have the possibility of opening the tailgate from the inside, so I started thinking what to do with it.
In juliang’s Acapulco thread I saw a pic of the tailgate stripped where it was visible that only two wires lead to the opening button. Did a little research and it turns out that the opening button apparently just serves to connect a wire and that signal unlocks the tailgate. Plan was clear - add one more button to unlock the door on the inner side of the door.
Provided you want to place the opening button in the middle of the door, there are two potential locations -
(1) above the “bus handle” and
(2) below it.
I decided to place it above, very close to the outer opening button. You do not have to push that far and the button will be more accessible even if we had some kind of elevated bed inside of the car. The ”bus handle” won’t hang over it. On the other hand, when placed close to the floor, there is more space inside of the door. The location I picked already has the original button in there with some cables. Lower location is totally empty inside the door.
I bought original opening button
5N0827566T and metal housing
1T0827229A
I did not want to interrupt the original loom of the car, so I decided to make myself a spliced “wire extender”.
After opening the tailgate I checked the connector part number and bought some more of them from our Chinese fkin friends from AliExpress, because originals from VW parts dealer were scandalously expensive for a piece of plastic.
Male connector is
1J0973119 and female
1J0973332. When buying the parts from Ali, do not buy the connectors with wire already in, it is too thick. Instead just get 0,5mm2 wire, because crimp terminals provided with connectors can take two of those, so you can just splice it without any issues.
I bought here
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007 ... 19cM6g8ls
(the link will probably get outdated someday)
I made one end 10cm long and the end going to a new button 20cm, so that I can remove it comfortably when disassembling the door cover. Finally wrapped it with a textile tape.
Then I was fiddling around with exact location in order to avoid interference with already placed cabling and outer handle. In the end I placed the button exactly in the middle between wiper cover and the “bus handle”.
Took the door cover and cut a hole exactly
42x101 mm. I made it slightly smaller and then was filing it so that the button sits snug. This is not necessary though, since the metal housing should hold it in place.
A little issue arised. The door cover is thicker than metal, what I expected, but the outer button placement apparently has a few mms offset inwards (is not mounted into planar sheet of metal, but there is an indentation around it), so the metal housing was not fitting perfectly, in fact interfering with the connector, so I had to cut a bit off.
Now it is easy to pull the connector out. Furthermore, as you can see, the two threads are a little too short, but I think it will work. A little Loctite thread locker could maybe help. It was finally time to put it back into the car.
Connector labelled as
(1) did previously go into the outer button. Instead I connected my extender to it, shorter end of extender
(2) goes to outer button and longer end
(3) to the inner button.
I also moved moved the wiper cable holder out of the way to the left. Untaped it from the cables and retaped it elsewhere.
Now it looks as if it belonged there, doesn’t it?
