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Power door locks gone crazy!

18 years ago

1998 Plymouth Grand Voyager

The power door locks and door sensors go nuts, especially when the vehicle is cold. The locks click, the door is ajar warning flashes, the interior lights flash on and off. Sometimes, reclosing all the doors helps, but sometimes not. What's happening? What can I do about it?

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Comments (3)

john_g
18 years ago
The most likely cause is a door jam switch issue that is falsely signaling a door opening. I would start by monitoring the door swtich inputs to the BCM. They are available in serial data discretely. You do have to consider the possiblity of a wiring harness grounding.

Barring that, you will have to disconnect switches one at a time from the BCM, until you find the one that stops the symptom, then go find out what is wrong with that circuit.
john_g
18 years ago
Lucky...

I disagree again with the quick run to try a temporary fix. At the least it is time wasted, at the worst it could make the job simply harder to actually solve if you then cause a "hide and go seek" intermittent.

Follow correct troubleshooting routines, and go straight at the problem. That means, a qualified technician with the correct O.E. scan tool, which for this car is the Chrysler DRBIII. With that tool I can monitor the serial data directly and see which input is causing the BCM to make what appears to be an erroneous decision. The diagnostics continue from there and then only on the speciific circuit involved.
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bonebloodyidle
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Back in 1992 I had a Ford Sierra as a company car. The insulation on the wires going from the body to the doors wore through and the wires for the central locking shorted out. That lead to some very entertaining (and awkward at times) events as it also set off the alarm and enabled the immobiliser whenever it felt like it. Usually at junction 9 on the M6 on a Wednesday morning on my way to a meeting in Birmingham.

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