New Discovery

[steve2006]

Some of us will remember the early LS400s that suffered from some weird electrical faults due to wire breaking inside the loom as it passed around the boot hinge. Fortunately it was fairly easy to fix by opening up the loom, fixing the break and then taping it all back up.

Today I decided to do a little “housekeeping” on the new Celsior/LS430 as there were a couple of exposed wires hanging down in the boot for the retrofit rear parking sensors.

I removed the boot trim to gain access and after removing the trim piece which has the boot light in it ( not the boot lid light) I came across a black plastic cylinder with the boot lid wiring loom going into it before exiting again on the other side.

It appears that this device is a spring loaded spiral, the loom goes into it and is then wrapped around a spool. When you open the boot the spool turns and the complete loom extends between the device and boot and when you close the boot the spring tension pulls the loom back in again.

So basically there is never any stretching of the loom and the earlier model problem will never reoccur.

A bit difficult to explain but if you look at the loom as you open the boot it appears to extend and when you close it the loom retracts into the spool.

[Las Palmas]

A very special and complicated way to solve a problem.

Funny that on all the cars we have had there never was a problem like the one you described, but before almost all electric lamps etc. was not in the boot, so no electric wires going there. Wonder if it is a problem with the 2016 CT, but if it is I expect it to be pretty easy to solve without going to Lexus garage.

[steve2006]

Only Lexus would develop this to overcome a previous problem .

This was the fault

http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/lighting/bulbout.html

[rich1068]

A similar problem affects the V70. As you say, only Lexus/Toyota would engineer a solution like this.

[BigBoomer]

Only needed if you have taillights mounted on the boot lid.

Getting reliable decent quality electrical connections between 2 moving parts has always been a problem.
Hence the clock spring in the steering wheel, hence the stranded wire used in the door cables (they only open a little over 45°) and in the boot lid (90°).
The LS430 boot lid wiring solution is good but probably still will have issues eventually, but it looks so much better.

I've seen other solutions to the boot lid wire problem but most just leave a loop of wires in a sleeve like the BMW below.
Eventually the wires fracture and need to be repaired.