Hey everybody, hope you're doing well.

I cut the wires going into my doors, and now my speedometer, odometer and interior dome light do not work . The truck also shifts very strangely and hard as a mule now . It was revving up on flat ground then BANG into the next gear eventually . The dome light make sense to me , but not the other issues . I would think cab lights , speakers, power locks, power windows would be the only affected items. Possible blown fuse when I cut them ? I didn't look but Exterior 3rd brake light wouldn't light up either now I would think.

If anybody could give me some insight into the mechanism by how this affected all those process would be hugely appreciated.

If you want to hear a long winded story haha , below I'll describe how I got to the point of cutting the wiring . It is not needed information. Can skip reading it for sure . Warning, it is very long !

Here's the story , my defense if you will haha. My driver door hinges were in really bad shape and the door would drop big time when you opened it . As well as my window motor little plastic cogs were grinded to powder so window would not move good at all (power windows ).

So I went about removing the door, to change the hinges and plastic pieces in window motor . I ignored the advice to pencil the outline of Hinges . Big mistake. I got everything taken apart then realized there was no quick disconnect for the wiring in the door . Could not figure out how to remove by reaching in the door panel, to the various locations. It appeared there may have been a way to disconnect at least some of the wires under the dash, but could not get my hand or a tool in there to get the disconnect apart .

instead of walking away , i was frustrated and said screw it and just cut the wiring so I could complete the task at hand with the hinges .

only had a short time frame to work on the truck, hinges turned out alright, but nowhere near perfect, so at least door didn't drop anymore when you opened but definitely not lined up good .

fast forward a couple years , and hinges getting worse and worse since wasn't installed in the right spot , so bad that I can't even open the door anymore . Been so dang busy and many other things taking priority that never could justify the time to fix the hinges.

found a good day , removed the door and got to work . Did guess and check, and after a few times said I just want to measure the existing never removed passenger door hinge locations and go off of that. So just cut the wiring like I did on driver door, and popped door off , measured and installed driver door the same . I could not get a good measurement with door in . Just needed a few tweaks from there and Got the door money! It was in such bad shape before I had to pry the door open.

When driver wiring was cut , speakers , power windows and locks were the only consequences. So I figured cutting passenger would be the same . Not true , now the new symptoms are (noted at beginning)

-interior dome light not working (makes sense) I'd imagine 3rd brake light that lights up when door opened not working now too.
-truck shifting very strangely , and shifting like a mule . Revs up on flat ground , then BANG into the next gear. Now some of that I figured could possibly be that I never could get the truck out of 4wd, my transfer case lever Needs adjustment, i could not get it into 2 wheel, so just drove it with the hubs unlocked . Short drive getting firewood didn't want to throw in the towel . So maybe in 4wd the transmission shifts differently? but i would think not , that it shifts the same and doesnt care if it's in 4wd or 2wd.
-speedometer not working
-odometer not working

my intial thoughts are , the doors are obviously a circuit tied in with each other, and with the passenger cut no electricity could now flow at all back to the source. And the trans issue is because it can receive no input from the speedometer to assist in shift points. But just baffles me why those issues would be tied in with the door wiring. Unless I blew a fuse cutting it .

My main takeaways from the whole situation is , that I need to do my research, learn from others that have done these tasks before , be patient and not get frustrated and just cut wiring . Bad idea . My time saving idea ended up creating many more issues and additional work. Doing it right the first time instead of just winging it moving forward.

I ended up changing the driver door to manual windows as well , and perfectly fine with manual locks. I prefer manual windows so I wasn't tore up at all about losing the power windows. Will change passenger out as well to manual. Would be weird one power one manual haha .

if you stuck with me to the end here I appreciate it , you are awesome! Any insight is appreciated to understand why this happened . I know I Will need to restore the affected wiring . Plan to look at wiring diagrams to get some clues. Just wanted to reach out first in the hopes of getting some good info and wisdom from you guys and hopefully someone on the verge of cutting the door wiring sees this post and abandons ship on that idea haha . Have a great day !

 

My money is Fuse 8 is blown. Maybe more....Assuming this issue is on a 1995 model year truck.

 

Thank you for the idea I will check on that! Yes it's a 1995 F250, 351 windsor with an E4OD.

 

Did you disconnect the battery first?
If not, you shorted the harness as you cut into it.
The wires that shorted could have gotten hot, then melted, then shorted with other wires.

 

I did not . Big knucklehead move . Cut them all at the same time too . Not one at a time like I should have.

That is certainly possible !! I'm gonna dig into it this weekend and will report back

 

It was fuse 8 ! Like a 2 min fix . Runs like a top now ! You guys are the best thank you for the help !

 

That's good news. Lots of helpful folks here.