Windows stuck and got power to master switch

Thank to everyone for taking time to read this thread! First of all my windows started to get stuck out about 8 months ago. And i noticed when the driver side door was closed i could not make the windows work and the illuminated lights on the master switch were off and the windows would not work. Then i noticed if the door was half open the lights would come back on the switch and the windows would work. Intill it gradually got worse and then it would not work at all. Also i use my X as a delivery vehicle and the driver side door get's opened about 60 times a day for about the last 4 years. Well then about 3 months ago i decided i would try to see if i could fix the problem. As i took the panel off and pulled on the wires in the door jam i got the window to come down a little bit then it really stopped working. So i had my daughter press the up switch as i yanked on the wires in the door jam and gradually got the window up before the onset of winter hit and i left it like that for the last three months. So i did some research and found this site (which is really helpful) and statred checking the fuses and some wiring. All of my fuses and relay checked out OK (I think) First i got good fuses at #17 in the box under the dash And # 6 is also good under the hood. Also pulled switch on driver side door and checked black/ light blue wire at switch and i got power. Could it be the ground wire? Why would the ground wire make a diffrence if i got power at the switch? I read one thread were this guy said make sure you got power to the switch and CHECK FOR A GOOD GROUND TO THE MASTER WINDOW SWITCH ON THE BLACK (BK) WIRE. How do you check for a good ground? Why would the switch work when i yanked on the wires in the jam? I thought for sure it was going to be no power at the bl/ blk wire but got power at the switch ! I can only suspect that the ground wire might be bad. Is that possible to make the windows not work? Please help! spring has just begun and i would like to let in that fresh spring air. I't will be greatly appreciated if someone has the magic answer! Thank again to everyone for the help.

Since you mentioned that they would go up when you opened the door and open it 60 times a day, maybe somewhere in the wiring harness between the door and cab, a wire may be kinked/split? You may need to undo the wrap on the wires to make sure nothing is spliced and follow the wires as good as possible to make sure they meet their connections. Do the windows go up and down when using the switch on the door of the window you want going up and down? I did have a problem one time when I couldn't get my drivers window up without pushing very hard on the switch until one day it didn't go up no matter how hard I pushed. Bought a new switch and all was good.

No not even one window works. I think its got to be a broken wire somewhere in the jam. It seems people on diffrent thread that i have read have had a broken black wire (ground) I am going to check for contunity from the switch on the black wire to the jam and see if it might be briken somewhere betwwen those two spots? What do you think?

problem solved found the broken wire. nice spring air flows thru my x. feels good

BoneKrusher said:

problem solved found the broken wire. nice spring air flows thru my x. feels good

Click to expand...

Whicj wire and where was it?

bump

it was the black wire

it was the bklack wire in the door jam about a 2-3 hour job

BoneKrusher said:

it was the bklack wire in the door jam about a 2-3 hour job

Click to expand...

Please explain what you did to repair it.

Thanks....

hey bro!

You need to first check to see if you got power to the main switch. I believe it is the red wire. Use a volt meter and put the prong into the wire. And see if you got power to the switch. If you got no power to the switch you have a broken wire somewhere from under the hood to the switch. If you got power to the switch then enter the volt meter prong into the black wire and see if you got power going to the other windows. It is kind of weird on my 2002 even if you got power to the switch ( the red wire) you would think the windows would still work. But if the ground wire ( black wire) is Broken or cracked none of the windows will work. Now what i had to do is find where the break in the wire was in the door. So once i knew i had power to the switch i knew the switch was still good. I enter the prong into the black wire at the switch and it showed power going back out of the switch. so next i went about foot down the wire and check to see at that point if i had still had power and i did. At this point i had to unravel the whole bundle of wires and seperate it from the door harness. It looks like a lot of work but it's not to hard as it seems. If you have to do this here is a little trick take some pictures via your cell phone or digital camera so you know what it looks like before you start taking it a apart and more pictures as you do a little more work so you know how to put it back together. Once you find where the power break is in the wire make a jumper wire and run the wire to make a power connection. Also when you find the power break disconnect the battery cable. Do your repairs and then reconnect the battery and see if the main switch works. Make sure you have the same gauge of wire for the power supply i believe it is 14 gauge. You will need these the things before you start: volt meter, wire cutters, electrical tape , butt connectors, exacto knife (to sepereate the wire harness) and your camera if you got one. good luck i will be check later to see if you replied. And also give me some more info. on iff it's all the windows or just one of the windows?

In my case the drivers window will not work and sometimes the front passenger one won't. The rear 2 windows always work.

Thanks for the info.

Any more hints?

more hints !

Do you have a repair manual that you can get like at napa or autozone, or etc ? Sometimes they have a wiring diagram of your window wiring ? Do you have a master switch on the driver door panel ? What year is the explorer ? Have you checked your fuses ? Sometimes i have heard it can be a relay also ! It sounds like to me that it could be the wiring. What happened to mine was that at first the windows would work one day and than the next day they wouldn't. What i noticed one night that the window switch on my ford will illuminate at night time. (Well it always has lit up) But when the windows were not working they were not illuminated. But when i opened the door they were illuminated. So somewhere in the door jam i figured the wire was broken and when i opened the door it was making a connection. It's kind hard driving down the freewat at 70 m.p.h and trying to open your door and drive and push the window button to get some fresh air! lol! Anyays eventually the wire broke all the way. What you could try on your passenger door is to see if you open the door and try to roll the window down and see if it works and also the driver side door. It can't hurt to try. If that works it sounds like it could be a wire issue. I use my vehicle for deliveries so if i open my door at least 60 times a day for about 10 years. I was bound to eventually have some kind of wire breakage in the driver door. Try to put the puzzle together by thinking about when it started happening and why it would work some days and not other days. Sometimes there are clues there that will help you dignose the problem. Couple more things it could be just a bad switch. Easy to replace. See if you know someone that has the same year explorer and use there switch to see if it is the switch before you go out and buy a new one. They can be a little bit pricey! Also maybe it could be the motor that makes the window go open and down. First i would do the open door trick and see if you can get the windows to move. If that doesn't work check your fuses and relays. You can do that by pulling each fuse or checking with a volt meter. If you know what fuse operates your windows that would be a lot easier than pulling each fuse. Let me know what happens and give me more info. I might have a couple of more hints so give me the symptoms of what is really happening when you try to roll your windows down! Good Luck!

Thanks for the hints on a stuck window

BoneKrusher,

Wanted to say thanks for your post. I had a front passenger window that wouldn't go up. Verified that the switch was ok by testing it on another door. I was getting ready to pull up my sleeves and pull the window motor out, but remembered I better check that the window motor was getting juice.

I would have bet a hundred buck that I was getting juice to the motor since it would make a click sound when I tried to put the window down (already maxed out in the down position), but no noise when the pressed the button to bring the window up. After unplugging the window motor plug, I found that I had 12 volts when pressing the window button down and 3 volts pushing the button up.

Then I decided to check out where the main ground was and decided to clean that up and make sure I had a good contact, so I did that. Then I thought I'd better check the battery. It still had the ford stock plastic covers on, so I pulled them off and found a moderately corroded ground wire on the battery. Duh! I cleaned off the wire reallllly well and that fixed it right up. Anyway, your post got me thinking about the wiring and ground issue, so I wanted to say thanks for sharing that angle with everyone cause it helped me out.

Thanks for the help

I have a 2003 Ford Explorer XLT and was just able to get my power windows working again. I never thought that inside of a rubber hose a wire could wear and break, but that is right where I found my broken ground wire. I patched in a piece of 14 awg wire with a couple of butt crimp connectors and then left some slack and zip tied the wires and re-taped them. All in all it took about 1 hour or so to patch back together, but many hours of scratching my head to figure out was happening.

I was experiencing this issue with my explorer. The windows wouldn't function if the doors were closed. In a fully opened or just slightly closed position the windows would function. After putting the windows down for a ride home today they wouldn't go back up, no matter what I was doing. Took the door panel off of the door, reconnected the switch, while I pushed and pulled on the wiring harness to straighten it my wife was able to close the windows (at least they were up now, so we didn't have to worry about rain), I then continued to remove electrical tape from the wiring harness until I saw the exposed copper end. A couple of splice connectors, a length of 14 awg wire, some zip ties, and electrical tape later we can now put the windows up and down in any position of the drivers door.

Thanks again for the help.

thank god for this page....my driver and passenger side windows have been stuck down for over a week on my sport track... i just got a new window switch in today thinking that was the problem...not it...so now im going to take all the good advice from above and apply it to my truck..thanks again for all the tips...and if anyone needs a new master power switch for driver side im wanting to get rid of mine seeing that i dont need it

Window hot wired to go up

I haven't seen this info on here so thought I would add it to this post.

I also had the bad ground wire problem and put in my own ground from the door and ground it on the chassis. I have more problems with the electric so more of the wires are bad too but I won't be fixing it. This time the drivers window will roll down but not up and the culprit seems to be the switch. I need to get it rolled up so I can drive it so I opened up the door panel, checked the color wires on the motor, found them on the switch and put 12V on them. The window cranked up, so I don't have to drive around with plastic on the window or the window down. This is probably simple stuff for most of you but I wanted to post this for people like me that spent as much time as I did trying to jumper wires on the switch.
I put 12volts on the two wires to the motor using a car jumper/charger set to jump start. The drivers window has a brown/blue wire and a white/black wire. Check the motor for the right wires.

I have a 2003 that has windows that wont open. I'm getting power to the switch. Sounds like it may be the ground wire. Does any one know what color the ground wire might be?

Mine is black on 02 Mountaineer. I ran a new wire from the chassis ground in the truck out through the door and clipped it from the switch block instead of tearing open the whole wiring harness at the door. I realize this only solved the ground wire breaking and I still have other problems which points to more wires that are broken but at least the windows and door locks work now.

hI gang! finally dear to you i found why my windows where stuck..... the light blue and black wire was broke between the front driver door and the cab... just that.....****!!! got me 1 hour to fix it but i need to know what is the grade of the wire.... i've put a smaller wire for now but i think with the winter comming that i'll have to change it, cose it may cause a break fuse or a fire, i will put photos and title when i'm going to do that again, sorry for my english i'm from quebec city in canada, and here we are all talking french since 1608... just 7.5 million of people...lol just want to say you a very big tanks you for this wonderfull forum of one of the best suv in the world! thanks everbody!!

The ground (black) wire in my 2003 Explorer was 14 gauge. I'm not sure about the other wire, been awhile since I was in there.

Hey everyone involved in this thread! thanks for the info, i have been having problems with my driver door window and all windows not working when the driver door was closed. but when opened all the way its fine. thats a million for the info...

PS: whats with the word pizza in place of the word "THE"?? it lost me!