this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
163 points (99.4% liked)

Just rolled into the shop

1007 readers
242 users here now

a place for mechanics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] pishadoot@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 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.