Thank you for your reply, ground the pink/green wire? do I just expose the wire somewhere by trimming back insulation than attach a wire to it and ground it to a screw?

 

yes you bare the wire and ground it to metal on the car. if it works then you know the wire is good from that point to they relays ,

 

Indy57, please post back with any progress you make. It will be a while until I get to dig into the problem for myself so anything you run into I'd be happy to hear of.

Thanks

 

Thanks noboston, it may be a day or 2 before I get back to it but will post my findings AC75

 

My 97 locks only with the keypad or the rear hatch switch. Inside unlock works fine as well, the key in both doors work well. Double turning of the key also unlocks everything. I've learned to live with it for the 2 years I've owned it as I'm a little too old to go crawling around chasing wires and mechanics would charge me a fortune to diagnose the problem? The vehicle always has more pressing problems to deal with! noboston, excellent help as usual from the members of this site!

 

I finally got around to the door lock today,I ground the wire from close to the switch to the door and nothing happened, so am I to assume my problem is from that point to the relays?

 

1999 Ford Explorer doors will only lock using the switch in the rear cargo area. The remotes & 2 front door switches will unlock but will not lock the doors. While searching the Internet for a solution I found your post & your advice worked perfectly. Thank you very much. Without knowing the color of the wire to jumper there would have been no way for me to correct the problem. Thanks again. Wayne - West Palm Beach, FL.

 

How about a run down of what you had to do? Did you open the rubber boot cylinder between the front door on the drivers side?

 

I loosened the LONG bolt on top of the junction box in the driver's door jam & unplugged the female plug because I could not get to the wires going thru the body into the cab. Then I removed the rubber grommet from the truck body & looked for, but could not find the pink wire with a yellow stripe. I removed the rubber boot off of the female plug end, located the wire & tapped into it with a long piece of wire that would reach the back of the truck. (NOTE: you will need to plug the female plug back in to test the driver's door switch but once you connect the jumper wire, the passenger's door & remote transmitter should work with it unplugged.) I didn't find any relays behind the jack but there was a black terminal block & a white plastic box in there & they both had a pink wire w/yellow stripe going into them. I tapped into each of those wires 1 at a time with the wire that I connected to the driver's door plug earlier. I tested the door lock switches & remote transmitter. Still nothing worked. Then I tapped into the pink wire w/yellow stripe that connects to the door lock switch in the rear cargo area & tested again. All door switches & remote transmitters worked fine so I knew the wire must be broken somewhere.

So, finally, if this test works for you, splice a wire into the pink wire w/yellow stripe somewhere between the body & the female plug in the driver's door jam, run it to the back of the truck under the plastic molding on the floor & splice it into the pink wire w/yellow stripe that goes into the door lock switch in the rear cargo area & everything should work! (I removed the plastic panel on the left inside floor area of the driver's compartment & ran the wire thru the same hole, grommet & rubber sleeve that the factory wires go thru to reduce the chance of a pinched or cut wire.

Good luck & let me know how you make out.

 

Ok, so you didn't find and fix the break in the original wiring?

 

Nope. All of the wires looked fine. Compared to the other wires going into the female plug, the pink wire w/yellow stripe seemed to be very loose, but I wasn't sure how, or if, I could fix that so rather than taking a chance on messing up the plug and/or wiring harness, I just ran an additional wire. The tests proved this would solve the problem.
I've never had to buy or replace a wiring harness but it doesn't look cheap or fun. :-)

 

One happy guy here. I too taped into the pink/green wire under back seat carpet, then taped into same wire at the barrel in drivers door jam. Now I can lock and unlock all doors from drivers door, no more reaching over to passenger side. Yippee! Thanks for the tip wpbhouck and noboston. I too could not find the broken wire but hey all is good now. Thanks again everyone.

 

So if both the above were unable to find a wire that was actually broken, what's going on? Are they just loose, broken under the wire skin, or what?

 

It was probably a broken wire inside the insulation somewhere between the driver's door & the rear cargo area switch. It seemed like a lot more work to inspect every inch of that one wire than it was to run the additional wire.

 

Hi I have problem with my 1999 Explore the door locks will not lock with both the front door switches or the remote but they will lock with the rear switch. I can unlock the doors with the remote and all the switches. Dose this sound like the same problem you have given the fix for. Would I still use the left hand door to do the test as I have a right hand drive model. But the left hand door jam has what looks like some sort of plastic piece going into a rubber piece and on the right hand side it just has the rubber in the door jam.