I am continuing with my ham radio installation and I now want to do some bonding ( wide braid strap for RF grounding between panels)

I see these two wires at the hinge for the upper tailgate. (Picture with round black insulated wire)

Can I replace it with a wide braided strap?

What are these wires for?

 

Pretty sure these are just grounding wires to join all the metal parts together. Replacing it like you did with a braided strap should be fine. That particular spot is where I grounded my rear facing work light to.

 

Soinds good just wanted to make sure that there was not a high current load on the wire for the rear defroster or some such. I do plan on shortening them that was just a pretty made piece 1 foot long for an example.

Now that I think k about it I may just add it and have bot.

Thank for the input, although I am still curious why they are there.

 

If it helps at all, I can send you the wiring diagram for the rear window heating element. It obviously doesn't show any ground wires that aren't directly in the circuit path though. Regardless, what you suggested is probably the best idea. Supplement... don't replace.

As far as why the wire is there... I'm no EE, but my guesses are either to prevent static discharge (which is horrendous is some cars like my wife's), to aid in filtering out the noise/interference generated by the rear heating element (in combination with the filter in the wiring diagram), or simply as a safety precaution in case of a short... don't ask me the details, but aren't all metal parts supposed to be grounded to a reference point?

 

I will cut new strips of braid about 6 inches long and ADD them to the existing wires. And yes the purpose of me adding the braid is to reduce the receive noise on the High Frequency (HF or Short Wave) Ham bands

I am STILL curious to know why they are there