Replacement Door Looms

[MrF]

I have the 130bhp Mk2 with electric windows all round, that I've owned from nearly new (6k /6 months old ex hertz car, 200k on the odometer now!). Its been a great family bus with just the usual bits around the diff drive splines etc, and even now we keep it about as a second car to something more economical but its starting to age disgracefully with electrical issues.

 

I've already spliced some wires in two of my door looms after my rear electric windows started playing up and central locking stopped working, but as everyone else is finding, the looms are fatigued where they flex for the door openings and it keeps re-manifesting itself in different doors.  I'd like to just replace all of them and be done if possible. Does anyone supply replacement door looms that aren't fatigued? Or know of a source for the original connectors (or even just the blades for the oem plugs to reterminate a homemade loom) so I can make my own up but with oem plugs? I don't mind making my own looms up (I have a hobby of building hotrods and drag bikes) I just like to stick to oem connectors for a easy life.

 

All I can find on ebay so far is used looms, which are going to potentially be as bad as what I have already.

 

 

[BrianH]

Others have managed to purchase them, but have posted with problems (generally when its a VAG sourced bit going onto a Ford, or the other way round, due to small differences between the looms - some of the later VAG models have the indicator on the mirror not the wing for example, and this bit of the loom is only there where thats the case).

 

I found that replacing the dodgy section of wire, and keeping the solder joints out of the door hinge where possible (join to wire inside the door itself on the door side) and keeping any joints as short as possible (soldered wire will be stiffer than unsoldered and resist bending, stressing the wire elsewhere) worked fine on the mk1 on everything except the boot. The boot was fine for about 2 years until one day the thick brown wire broke again, so everytime I pressed the brake pedal the dashboard illuminated. Resoldering the wire back together works but only for a short time (as you end up with it shorted than when it first broke as well as stiffer), replacing the dodgy section is the only way to get a long term fix

 

If your dead set on keeping the connector (I can understand your reasoning for doing so) then the only thing i can suggest is find a cheap loom on eBay and try to see if you can do anything with the connector (Its been so long since I've done anything on mine I can't remember if the connector is pins or flat blades, if its the blades you can usually remove them with something to press the retaining latch out of the way).

[MrF]

Thanks for your post, they're flat pins, but the issue seems to be that there's 3 physical sizes in the connector with matching different wire diameters when I checked it out casually, so as you say buy a old sub loom, and rebuild it at my leisure with new wires as a hot spare & then can measure up and source loose crimp ends + right gage of wire to remake the loom with. Noted on the difference between marquee's, I noticed already that I need looms from a rear power windows model car, and to complicate things mine is a lhd, so passenger side for me is actually drivers side and has more wires in to control the power windows for all the other doors + mirror controls in it. When I patched up the two door looms, I spliced in a length of wire to get the solder joints out the flexing area but its a bit piecemeal and doesn't feel like doing it properly long term.

 

Currently I have the drivers door loom unplugged, but issue 2 is the bit the plug goes into has fell into the door pillar (think its broke somehow as the socket should be captive in its position), so perhaps the loom wasn't making the contact it should too, its so tight to get access to that plug area with the door mounted its hard to tell. I think I'll have to take the door off completely to get better access, and probably the lower dash, as the column/pedals/fusebox and odb plug are all trying to occupy the same area being a lhd.

[BrianH]

The socket falling inside the door is common - the design is very weak in my opinion as not much actually holds it in place, and with old plastic it gets brittle as well.

 

I don't know if the front door looms are the same swapped left to right if you have a LHD Vs RHD - They may be.

 

When i've had that socket/plug fall out i've managed to get hold of it through the gaps and reposition it without taking anything off (you can just get a finger in through the gap) but that was on a mk1, the mk2 may be a different story (if your fusebox is on the drivers side you might find opening the access flap gives you a path to it if your hands will go in there)

[MrF]

I took the drivers door off completely in the end. There's no way I was getting my fingers in there to fish the plug back out the hole otherwise and it seemed easier than stripping the entire dash out to put a plug back in. Its only the 10mm on the check bolt and two torx bolts on the pins though. Once the doors out the way, its easy to fish back out via the hole and seat the sealing ring to hold it like you say.

It did lead to a comedic (if you weren't me) moment when I had the door hanging on my shoulder doing the job on my own, having plugged the harness back in and got it home properly, some aggressive wasps decided it was time to go in for the attack while the stupid human was compromised at being able to respond as the loom was connected but the door not on the pins at that point. I only got stung in the head twice, got the door back on, and got a large cut in my shoulder for my troubles. I've killed and removed two wasps nests from it earlier in the month from the door jambs and rear boot area, so I guess they've moved house to somewhere else on the car, although I've used it a few times since, so they must have gone on some pretty epic journey's by insect standards to still be there and alive.

And for insult to injury it hasn't fixed the loom issues, so I'll have to get the meter back out and take it off again, once I've located where the wasps nest has been made and eliminate it. I am beginning to remember why I have in the past bought my wife fairly new cars and have the dealers fix them...

[MrF]

Got it, both of it. First the wasps were hanging out in their new clubhouse inside the spare wheel inside the well. Or were, because they've been turfed out by a can of raid. I generally like nature, but when it attacks me for trying to work on my own vehicle it has to go.

Second, the rear right door lock module is the real culprit. When I unplugged the loom to it, the central locking suddenly started working again. So I meter'd out the wiring harness from the door pillar and no shorts or breaks. Then I unplugged just the lock module and it was behaving, so off to ebay for some used lock modules instead.

 

Now just the aircon that the local garage have said is unfixable, I have my suspicions around the activation solenoid on the compressor being stuck, as its not lost gas quantity when we had it checked...

[BrianH]

Good work - I hate wasps too, but not had them nesting in the car!

 

It might be worth some investigation with VCDS on the air con front, if its holding gas you've got the worst bit ruled out, some of the sensors can fail in such a way to stop it working though

[MrF]

Will do, I'm waiting for a minibull cloner to turn up and today some id44 immobilizer blanks arrived (its the id44 from the position of the odbII socket under the fusebox),  so then we can finally have two separate working keys again too. Quite a few years back my wife lost the immobilizer chip out of the remote key when it fell apart and she didn't notice the chip had dropped out and the dealers wanted lots of money because we only had one working key at the time so we just kept the remote key + the non remote one on the same ring so the non remote activated the immobilizer properly as a temporary fix. And there's nothing quite so permanent as a temporary fix. I just found the original 3rd ford plastic key to reprogram it unboxing some long forgotten box in the storage so now I could add a 3rd key anyway but I wanted to tinker with key cloning and canbus stuff in general.

I'll probably hook it up to the laptop after that to check if the cloned key id's are the same. I also wonder if they've been charging it with the correct weight of ac gas, since we have the dual independent ac controls front and rear which I think means it takes significantly more gas, but that should just show as a low pressure alarm in the logs. Hopefully they can have just been all that idiotic in all the garages that allegedly checked it.

[BrianH]

If you have vents in the roof at the back it has the dual system, no vents (you will have controls for the back either way) then its the single zone. Dual takes the higher figure on the sticker under the bonnet. Though i'd expect it to still work with the single system charge, just not as well as it should (mine single zone would work with 310g of gas though not well, as thats what was recovered from mine when it was regassed).

 

I'll be interested in what you find with the key cloning as I need a second key for mine (got one the previous owner has had cut, but not programmed to the car)

[MrF]

I cheated and used the 3rd key to code the missing one in. I put the working key in the mini zbull, and it identified it as a vag 44 crypt type, but the key blanks I bought were really that, completely blank virgin chips, and the zedbull reported the key chip as being reprogrammable by the ecu. So I put the blank chip in the remote fob, and followed the 3 key adding key to the car proceedure and it worked. I now have two working "proper" keys. Probably the zbull clone with effi will be able to code a blank chip also but I can't say this as I haven't actually cloned the key like I intended but we can call this one a win anyway and I'll play with the spare id44 chip I bought for when I cocked up the first one in the near future.

 

The locks to fix the rear doors turned up today too, but sadly one of the ebayer's doesn't know their offside from nearside it seems, good old ebay eh.

 

Yes we have rear roof vents, I'm going to go full on to fixing it myself as my wife told me yesterday the last garage told her it had lost the refrigerant completely (yet only a few weeks after the other garage said it was full and to pressure and had electrical issues...) so I've bought a two gauge setup and a vac pump and its on its way, and if it is degassed when I put the gauges on it, I can vac the system to find the leaks and test/prepare it for recharge then charge it knowing it holds a vacumn. It'll probably cost the same as finding a garage that's competent and getting them to fix it by the time I tot up the price of gauges and more refrigerant & spent time etc, but then I'll have the kit around for next time. If it hasn't degassed, then all I have extra is a vacuum pump, and a indicator to never use that last garage for anything again.

[BrianH]

If its lost all the refrigerant you probably have the leaky dryer cap issue that the mk2 has - I filled mine up with glue when it was in the same state as it wasn't coming out, worst case you have to replace the condenser which has the dryer built into it anyway (you can access it from the front grille area). It usually passes a vac test in that state anyway, but will leak slowly. Others have used hot melt glue to "fix" the problem, I used araldite as it meant i could avoid too much stripping down to get in there at the time.

 

Don't have a second key, though i have done that with a Focus where I had a broken key to get a replacement that was already cut to work. Vacuum gauge sounds interesting though will have a look into that next time i've got a/c issues.

[MrF]

Even if its not that, Ill inject some tracer dye into and check for that issue specifically thanks.

 

Just to confirm if this pops up in any searches about central locking issues, the lock modules themselves are not handed, and you can strip the electrical part of the door lock away from the mechanical part of the lock and swap just the electrical/solenoid parts of the lock module itself. Its just a case of defeating 3 small clips on the halves of the outer cover with a small flat screwdriver or similar, removing a steel cover on the alabrama door lock I was sold as a galaxy one that's secured with two m4 allen bolts, and then two self tapping screws hold the white electrical part to the black mechanical parts & on reassembly just align the plunger and spring with the mechanism and put it back how it was.

So my two nsr door locks are now fitted (well the solenoid assemblies anyway) and my central locking is 100% functional again. Both of the original lock modules were corroded inside around the small dc motor's from water ingress over the years. If I'd have been feeling really fastidious, I'd have took the new modules apart and packed them with dielectric grease to prevent this, but this is my wife's galaxy not one of my project cars :-)

[BrianH]

Good stuff, this link gives more info on the dryer cap issue > https://www.fordmpv.com/smf2/ford-galaxy-common-faults-and-problems/ford-galaxy-diagnosing-ac-gas-leaking-from-drier-cap-area/