[T3] '73 FI harness

[Keith Park]

Problem is, when you soak insulated wires in solvent, the solvent makes its
way into the wire under the insulation, and it takes forever if ever to dry
out way down inside, so it has plenty of time to ruin the insulation on the
wire.  The Copper itself isn't affected, that can only turn brittle with
work hardening and that wont be an issue with NOS harnesses unless someone
has sat there and played with it..

Yea, Im Mr. High-VOC but watch out for that Tri Tet!

Keith


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-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Adney [mailto:jadney at vwtype3.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 12:17 AM
To: Keith Park
Subject: Re: [T3] '73 FI harness

On 12 Mar 2013 at 19:16, Keith Park wrote:

> Ah ha!  Soaking it in lacquer thinner is what did it!

That wasn't responsible for the whole thing, but I suspect it 
accelerated the ageing. These are all old by now, even the NOS ones. 
It's quite possible that a NOS harness soaked in lacquer thinner 
could have turned out the same way.

I used to clean rubber parts in tri-chloro ethylene. Many of them 
would swell up to 2x their original size if soaked overnight, even 
large parts.  That really cleaned them, but the swelled up part 
turned out to be really soft and fragile. I had to set them aside and 
dry out for a week or so to get them back to normal, but it's 
possible that they ended up harder than before.

I haven't done this in 30 years, since tri-chlor was declared a 
carcinogen. Nasty stuff. Wish I'd never been around it.


-- 
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Jim Adney, jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
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