My Door Locks Have Almost Stopped Working. They Usually Work The First Time But Not The Second. 2000 Ranger

 

Welcome to FTE.

Try inspecting & cleaning the ground points for the door locks. Read trough the following thread, from about a year ago, on the subject & for for some testing ideas & look in post 23 for the ground point locations.
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/5...-locks-20.html

Let us know how it goes.

 

Good find Pawpaw!

rangerphil, Hi and Welcome to Ford-Truck Enthusiasts, if you need more from those diagrams (or better captions) let me know, I think I still have them around here somewhere.

Please let us know if you have more questions, need more ideas or even find the fix

 

I found the ground terminal that was described and took it off to clean it.. while it was removed, I tried the door locks expecting to find the locks dead, proving I was on the right track. They were not dead . I cleaned the terminals anyway & reinstalled. Locks not fixed.Thank you for the effort but I gotta ask again for help from someone who has delt with 2000 ranger locks. Sometimes one or the other will work and sometimes neither will work. The sound of the solenoid is heard and the button jumps a little but doesn't come up. THANKS AGAIN !

 

try the actuators themselves in the door you wanna remove and make sure there is no crud on the wiring harness contacts and you wanna take wd40 and spray the rods that cleans and lubes them

 

Did you inspect BOTH ground locations????

One was under the hood on the drivers side inner fender, the other behind the drivers side kick panel.

If both ground locations were inspected, then I'd begin looking at the wiring harness connectors pin & socket condition & doing some voltage drop tests & see if your having any large votage drops along the way, or whe you actuate the locks.
If so, you have a high resistance connection between where your testing now & the previous circuit point where things were ok.

Could be door switch, connector, or door actuator problems, but from your description of the locks working ok some times, it sure sounds like an electrical supply, or ground problem.

If the solenoid/actuators were bad/open circuit, they woldn't work at all. Also seems unlikely to me that both lock actuators would begin sticking at the same time.

So be sure you've checked both ground positions, then begin your B+ voltage drop testing, from the fuse, point by point, all the way to the door actuators.

You'll likely need a door lock electrical pictorial, or schematic, with switch, connector pin & wire color call outs.

After cleaning my under hood ground connections last July, my locks haven't acted up again, but I'm reluctant to pronounce the ground to be the problem as they loked ok, but were still acting up reght after I cleaned the ground connection, but the locks were ok the next morning & since. I did nothing else in between I can't claim cleaning the under hood ground point fixed anything.

I just hate intermittent problems, they are the most difficult to run down, because you have to work them while they're acting up!!!!

Keep us posted on your results.