Driver side door lock, wires cut..

[98 mounty]

Well since I got my Mountaineer the drivers side door lock rocker switch would never unlock the doors. But it would always lock just fine until recently.

So today while doing a oil change I popped off the door panel and pulled the switch out. It looked pretty good, but I cleaned it up anyways with some electrical contact cleaner and sand paper on the contacts. Using the multi-meter the switch seemed to be working just fine now. So I push the switch onto the control board and it doesn't do a single thing.

I decided to run up to the ford dealer and picked up a new switch. Before I bought it I asked if I could just pop it in quick and see if it fixed my problem and return it if it did not work. The guy told me if I put it in, its mine and I would not be able to return it. I bought one anways hoping this would fix it. I jumped back in the truck and pushed the new switch in. The doors locked, but would not unlock. So I figured hey at least one works again now.

So once I get back home I continue to play with it and soon figure out that the door will only lock when the door is almost closed or closed.... So my old switch was probably the same way but I only use the door lock when its open , before I close it.

So I pull out the multi-meter once again and check the contacts on the control board. I find that one of the power wires is completly dead, the other 4 wires are good. So I pulled off the boot and found my problem along with many other ones that are just waiting to happen....

One of the read power wires is cut clean off. And another red one is ready to go completly as well. Several of the other wires have cuts in the casing as well, and burn marks.

Now I am pretty handy with a solder iron, with over a dozen electric R/C trucks I've had the experiance and I have all the good equipment for it. But with this bundle of wires going into the door, I do not see any way I can even work on them without removing the door from the truck. I pulled the inside kick panel to see if I could maybe pull the wire bundle through and inside the truck. But it looked like that would not be easy either.

So what is the best way to attack these wires, and should I just do away with that rubber boot?


Here is a picture of my wires too.

 

[Eneurb]

If it's only a few wires damaged, it's okay to fix them right where they are broken, but if it's too many, I like to run a new wire from under the dash, through the conduit and into the door as not to have a big mess of splices inside the conduit.