Door jamb wiring

Now that I have power windows, speakers and door lock actuators in the doors I needed a way to route all the wiring from the doors into the cabin. The classic Mini has no rubber boots in the door jambs like modern cars, and a rubber boot would not fit within that space anyway. This photo of a piece of clay that I squashed in the door jamb (after the door was closed on the clay) shows how little room there is to work with - a gap of only ~7mm.

There are door looms commercially available that use a length of braided hose (web search for Stainless steel door loom) and have one end fixed and the other end moves in/out of a grommet as the door is closed/opened. These kits however only seem to have an ID of approx 8mm which is not large enough to fit the 9 wires I need to route on the drivers side (2x power window wires, 2x speaker wires, 5x door lock master actuator wires). I wanted to custom make some of my own.

I sourced a small length of AN-8 nylon/teflon lined braided hose which has a larger ~11mm ID and machined some aluminium end fittings for it. These end pieces are fixed in place with a couple of M4 grub screws.

I needed to fit these and have the holes in the door and door jamb really well aligned. I fitted some rivuts in the side of the door and machined a steel fitting that mounted into the rivnuts. This piece had a spike on one end and after fitting and aligning the door, it was supposed to mark the location for a centre drill in the door jamb when the door was closed...

This is where it all went pear-shaped. I realised that despite spending weeks waiting for machining stock and fasteners to arrive, heaps of hours making the prototype and final pair of custom door looms, the angles of the door just wouldn't work without the loom kinking. I should have mounted the doors and checked that first, and now I had to scrap everything. 

Below is a photo of the centre point marker (with a small 10mm socket) to indicate the acute angles that resulted when the door was closing.

So I was dead in the water with that idea but not everything is a success! A friend of mine with his Mini, took inspiration from the Jeep Renegade which has the wiring from the cabin into the door hidden within a sheath along the door check straps. I'll likely use that idea in the future.

So with the doors hung and everything aligned, I marked and installed some rivnuts for the door check straps. The check straps are normally fitted to the storage bins (which I have removed for this build) so needed to add some rivnuts for a new check strap.

The Mini check strap is actually just a short length of seatbelt material with some holes punched through it.

To make removing the door easier in the future, I will be adding small electrical connectors within the door for the window motor, speaker and actuator. Removing the door will then simply involve removing the door card and unplugging the few connectors in the door then pulling the (unbolted) door off.