96/97 liftgate swap | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

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96/97 liftgate swap

jmrcarguy

New Member
Joined
November 6, 2011
Messages
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City, State
Collegeville,PA
Year, Model & Trim Level
1997 Explorer
I recently had to replace the liftgate on my 97 Exxplorer. I was told 95-97 model years would fit and swap easily. The install was fairly simple...four 8 mm
bolts on the hinge and the clips on boths sides for the gas cylinders. I thought I was home free and went to hook up the electrical harness connector that goes under the rear headliner. Here is where the fun began. I found that the round barrel connector on the 97 has one wire and the 96 liftgate has 3. After doing some testing I found that 3 items would not work.
1 the auto lock function
2 the window open sensor
3 the 3rd brake light(most important)
After some online research which provided no help I hit the local Ford dealer who sadly could not provide a detailed electrical diagram of the liftgate wiring harness.
The best resolution was to swap the entire harness which has many plug connections but can be done easily. after swapping the harness I encountered one additional problem in that the plug for the rear wiper is different and I needed to splice the one from the original 96 harness. I'm sure there are many older Explorers still on the road and that is why I decided to post this.
If you need to swap a liftgate do your best to find the same year as for some odd reason Ford engineers decided to make these subtle changes.
 






Thank you, that is good info. It sounds like you did a good job with the swap.
 






Welcome To Explorer Forum, fella Pennsylvanian! Good information to share at your first post.
 






Agreed- very good info, I didn't even know about that... Bravo!
 






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