2000 F-250

When I got the truck the door locks would try to work but were too weak. Did my research and repaired the actuators with the aluminium foil method. But that did not fix the problem. Now the locks completely fail to respond. No clicks, no movement, nothing at all. Here is what I have done so far:

Checked fuse going to relay cluster under dash, good.
Checked power at relays under dash, good.
Tested all relays under dash, good.
Jumped the relays under dash, fail.
Jumped actuators, good.

I cannot seem to get any power to the actuators themselves. Only thing I can come up with is the VSM/GEM being bad but I have no other symptoms of this and based on the wiring diagram it seems jumping the relays should have worked anyway. Anyone have any ideas?

 

following thread as i have a similar situation

 

Not really understanding without seeing the schematics, because I'm used to older Fords, but if you have power and still have no reaction from the switches, I would think you might have a bad ground in the circuit. If you have the schematics, then check your grounds, remove them and clean them. I'm sure it's cheaper to check these than it is to buy a new GEM unit, right?

Checked fuse going to relay cluster under dash, good.
Checked power at relays under dash, good.
Tested all relays under dash, good.
Jumped the relays under dash, fail.
Jumped actuators, good.

If you had power going to them, why would you jump them?
Did you check to see if you had power going to your switches? Is this on both door switches or are you just trying from the master switch on the driver door?

 

Sorry for the long absence. I jumped the relay because it was easier than running a power wire directly to the actuator to check it.

Anyway everything is solved now but I cannot tell you for sure what the problem was. I took everything back apart retested the actuators, tested the individual wires, tested the switches and everything checked out. Put it all back together and it worked. The only thing I can think of is that there was a bad connection somewhere. My only problem now is that I keep trying to unlock the door with a key instead of using the power locks.