Boot lid grommets
 

Now there's an exciting subject!
The wiring from the body that sits alongside the boot hinge mechanism goes though a largish (25mm?) hole to enter the boot lid and has a protective grommet that snugly fits the metal. There's one each side and they appear to be moulded on to the wiring at an angle - roughly 45 degrees - to fit properly.

My nearside one, which has 2 cables through it (I think the very thin one is the GPS aerial) is fine. But the offside one (which carries a single thick cable) has hardened and fallen to pieces.

I've sort of "bodged" a solution with a suitable large grommet - cutting a hole in it for the cable and a slit on one side to slide it over the cable. After liberal application of duct tape it sits quite snugly.

But is there a more elegant solution apart from presumably replacing that whole cable loom with its moulded-on grommet? That is seems OTT in the extreme. :mad:

get a 2nd hand grommet from a8 parts, slit it and super glue it back together when its in place

Also, the large 'cable' is likely the vacuum pipe that actuates the boot lock mechanism..... +++

Concur with Neil - slit, slide on and glue +++

Ah, vacuum pipe, that makes sense.+++

The other one, where it comes out of the body is also quite hard but isn't subject to any movement stress so I guess will survive a fair while yet.

I hope so too! :)

The vacuum pipe, now I've looked at it, seems to be a very solid construction so I'm not at all worried about it getting damaged by my temporary fix. It seems to be a similar spec (maybe a bit slimmer) to the hose on my Karcher pressure washer!

Spotted the same problem with mine today, except mine has issues with the other end. The big grommet where the thick pipe enters the main body of the car is falling apart, and I don't know how long its been like it.

With the rain forecast for the coming week, and no immediate fix I have done the best I can to stop water ingress into the back right area just above the light cluster. I'll make a more permanent repair next weekend, until then lets hope for as little rain as possible.

Sounds like we could do a deal with A8 parts. +++
They strip out a good boot airline, carefully slit and remove the 2 grommets and send us 1 each.
It looks like they're probably identical, but best to get the right one just in case. ;)

I've gone in with the Duck tape for now, hopefully waterproof. When I affect a better repair, I only hope the paint does not come off with the tape. My 8 has seen a lot of additional paint in its time, although the current paintwork dates back to 2003.

I luckily had a grommet of the right diameter, though not as sturdy.
Cut it to fit reasonably round the pipe and used plenty of silver duct tape to secure and seal. :snigger: