the reason is, the wiring harness is cracked and frayed and corroded where they move every time the door is opened and closed at the door hinge,
Exactly!
In my experience this is the weak spot in the harness. Twice - on two different trucks - I had a complete PW failure. Both times, after ringing it out, the cause was ultimately found to be a break in a power feed leg somewhere in the area of the hinge opening.
It was hard to tell exactly where the cut in the wire actually occurred (in relation to the body/door). But a few rough measurements seemed to indicate that it actually happens either in the rubber flex conduit or the door jamb/flex hose flange interface (on the body side):
You must be registered for see images attach
This was the first time I had ever dealt with the PW/PL harness on these trucks - maybe 12 years ago. By the time I got to the point in the job where a detailed failure analysis could have been conducted - I had a bad attitude to say the least (see below). It was like: "Jerry, never mind
why it happened, just put the GD thing back together and hope you never have to do it again!"
The repair - the way I did it the first time anyway - is an absolute
pain in the ass. This is because - if you want to retain the original wiring - the common harness connector under the dash has to be disconnected and the entire wiring group has to be pulled out through the opening in the body, through the rubber boot, through the opening in the door and finally out of the door cavity.
To make matters worse, I had PW & PL locks and the break was at the drivers door both...so the wiring group was as big as it gets. Because of the two master switches in the drivers door, the wire bundle to that side is basically double the size of what goes to the RH door.
The connector ends kept hanging up in the rubber boot, so that needed to be released by hack-sawing through the flange rivets. Of course at reassembly, the flanges had to be re-riveted.
Only when the entire harness is pulled and hanging out of the door - is it then possible to strip and splice the broken section.
While the actual splice is done in a minute or two, the harness pull (in and out) takes about 6 hours and slices the **** out of your hands and fingers.
So the repair is done. Now it's time to fish the harness back through everything and into the cab. Fugget about it!
If I thought pulling the harness out was an ordeal - pushing it back in made
that look like a day at the friggin' beach!
Now when I pull that harness, the first thing that happens is the door is released from the hinges, the rivets for the conduit flanges are drilled out and the door is hung from a chainfall. Only then do I start to pull wires.
