Drivers Door Wiring Harness.....Fixed!

[Gottagetone]

A couple of weeks ago I posted up about an intermittent problem I was having. When the drivers door was open the window would not work, when closed it worked, first thought was..., I hate wiring problems.

I went to the stealership with a hope and prayer to ask if there was some sort of programming issue, not so lucky . While there, I decided to massage the wires in the rubber boot that goes from the body to the door and yep, the window quit working all together, luckily it was up.

Today I decided pull the door panel and see what was going on. Not seeing any noticeably easy problems, I ended up pulling the wires from the kick panel through the small holes in the body and door and this is what I found:

Turns out there is one wiring harness in the country and my cost was going to be almost $300. I ran a patch on the broken wire and taped up the cracked ones and everything is good to go for now.

 

[Trunk Monkey]

Any idea what caused it? Doesn't look pinched, looks cut.

 

[lexi4darin]

Any idea on how this problem originated?

 

[LCHardriver_02]

Looks like something (hole in sheet metal?) was cutting your wires. The insulation is cut on multiple wires.

 

[Gottagetone]

The rubber boot that the wires feed through is in good condition and it didnt appear that the door panel had ever been removed. Best guess is that the door opening and closing over time caused the wires to become brittle. It does look like they were cut but no outward signs of that. Hopefully just a freak occurrence.

 

[LCHardriver_02]

If the breaks (cuts?) were indeed caused by the wires flexing, expect to have further problems down the road. The wires were not intended to continually flex, causing the insulation to break down.

 

[Gottagetone]

If you open your drives door you can see the rubber boot that the wires are threaded through, they do flex with every open and close. As the picture shows, the cracks are in the bend where the flex occurs. The wires are not and should never be pinched. Its a tight spot and I can only assume that the stars were lined up just wrong enough to cause the problem.

 

[RobRed]

The rubber boot that the wires feed through is in good condition and it didnt appear that the door panel had ever been removed. Best guess is that the door opening and closing over time caused the wires to become brittle. It does look like they were cut but no outward signs of that. Hopefully just a freak occurrence.

Those are cuts... they are too clean and perfectly lined up to one another.

 

[Gottagetone]

Im gonna check the rubber boot again tomorrow to see wtf?

 

[LCHardriver_02]

The other thing to note is if the wires have sufficient slack in their raceway, the will not continually flex... move yes, flex no.

 

[Gottagetone]

So there are no visible cuts in the rubber boot and there is plenty of wire so there is no stretching. I agree that it certainly does appear to be a slice across the wires. The only thing I can think of is that 11 years ago someone in Japan screwed up and didn't realize it. When I stripped the wires back to do the splice, the wire itself was dark telling me that this happened a long time ago.

 

[LCHardriver_02]

That is very possible. I have been amazed, working in industrial electrical and instrumentation, how many things have come from factory "not quite right". Good you found the issue and was able to correct it. Congrats on the fix!

 

[lexi4darin]

Good you found the issue and was able to correct it. Congrats on the fix!

Exactly! And trust me, I've been trying to track down an issue in my truck for over a year. It is causing issues with my mirrors, windows, power locks. Different shops are indicating it's a different system. The Stealership says it's both fuse/junction boxes, of course the biggest most expensive of all the systems and it's the "catch all" response I expected.

Be glad you caught this on a first try and relatively easy to get to.

 

[Gottagetone]

^ possibly the same thing, have you checked the wiring harness? Whats going on?

 

[ElHefe]

GT, how do you get the harness through the door? Did you unhook it on the body side and pull it through the rubber boot? Same symptoms here (won't operate the window with the DS front door open and won't operate any of the other windows from the master switch).

 

[Dwight S]

GT, how do you get the harness through the door? Did you unhook it on the body side and pull it through the rubber boot? Same symptoms here (won't operate the window with the DS front door open and won't operate any of the other windows from the master switch).

I had the same problem. Luckily, I have a "body man" that lives across the street from me and he saw me working on it. What we did was remove door panel and then pulled the rubber boot loose from the door side and it will move enough to allow you to see the wire. Mine was the same red wire shown in post #1. We stripped it back and spiced in a short piece. Then we used a bit of electrical tape to tape up all the wires, several were showing cracks like above. It's been a year and everything still seems to be working fine.

 

[ElHefe]

I had the same problem. Luckily, I have a "body man" that lives across the street from me and he saw me working on it. What we did was remove door panel and then pulled the rubber boot loose from the door side and it will move enough to allow you to see the wire. Mine was the same red wire shown in post #1. We stripped it back and spiced in a short piece. Then we used a bit of electrical tape to tape up all the wires, several were showing cracks like above. It's been a year and everything still seems to be working fine.

Excellent. Thanks Dwight.

 

[ElHefe]

Pulled the door panel, pulled the boot through into the door and didn't see any cracked, sliced or frayed wires. Crap. I'll have to inspect again in the daylight.

Related question. When you start up, can you instantly roll down the DS window or is there a ten second delay?

 

[ElHefe]

Can anyone confirm this for me? Perhaps I'm going crazy and the power windows couldn't ever be operated immediately.

**When you start up, can you instantly roll down the DS window or is there a ten second delay?**

 

[Dwight S]

On my 1998 Land Cruiser, as soon as you start up, you can roll down the windows, no hesitation. Recheck the connection on the back of the switchplate. Over the weekend I noticed a slight hesitation when I went to roll down the window. Then later my lock button quit working. I checked the connector and it was slightly loose. Everything is working as it should now.