- First Name
- Brian
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2020
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- Location
- Wisconsin USA
- Vehicle(s)
- 1990 Bronco eddie bauer
- Your Bronco Model
- Badlands
- Thread starter
- #1
Does your Bronco sasquatch's dash suddenly go ape after you have removed it's doors? Does your bucking Bronco go bing bong bing relentlessly anytime you try to take it on a bareback ride? This happened to me the 1st time I removed my doors, and I believe I have both found the problem, and found a low cost solution:
How the system works:
Really pretty simple. I will give the engineers some credit here. There are 2 door modules on the vehicle (regardless of 2 or 4 door). Those modules are not mounted in the doors (as they commonly are in other vehicles) but in the driver and passenger kick panel/cowl/a pillar area. Why? So they can report over CAN that the doors have been removed by the customer, as this vehicle was designed to be able to do. So how does each door module "know" that the doors have been removed purposefully and there isn't just a complete electrical failure in the door?
Each door connector contains a "shorting bar" like the one you can see above. It shorts pin 7 to pin 8 in that connector when it is disconnected. One pin is purely a sensing circuit from the door module, the other is the door's ground. Don't remeber which, and not important at this point. What is important is that the door module MUST see ground on this circuit to flag the door as "removed by customer". Otherwise it will assume electrical faults exist. When it barks those faults over CAN every other module in the vehicle takes a bite and starts whining, and nannying. So no big deal right? 20 years from now when this thing is rusty and used it will be that guys problem...well my Bronco is brand new, and it spent 123 days in a "climate controlled storage facility". My passenger side doesn't work. Corrosion? Bent pin? Doesn't matter to me. I live in Wisconsin, and if the shorting bar doesn't work after 123 days of climate controlled storage, it won't work after a Wisconsin winter...so I figured out a workaround! Mine isn't the only way...you guys out there feel free to experiment!
My solution:
In this diagram you can see i have pointed out the shorting bar for the drivers door. It connects the VT/GY wire coming from the DDM to ground (VT=violet, thats purple in "non metric" colors. GY=grey, thats the same, standard or metric). Note that wire occupies pin 5 of c258B. This is the grey connector on the DDM. Also note that the "door off" sensing wire for the drivers REAR door is pin 4. Mine is a 2dr so I don't have to worry about that one, but "moar door" folks will.
Passenger side:
Passenger side ia a mirror image of the drivers. Front door sense wire is again pin 5 of the grey connector, only this time the wire is blue. Rear door (if I had one, which I do not) would again be pin 4 of the same connector. Heres connector views for the DDM/PDM
DDM:
PDM:
So here's what I did:
I thought about wiring some kind of toggle/rocker/dip switch in there...far to elaborate for my purpose, and if within reach I might accidentally flip it while the doors are off, or whatever...thats just overthinking it. I think Ford had a good concept w/the shorting bar idea, just unreliable execution 'cause they had to make it something that didn't require an extra step from the customer when removing the door. So I figured I could use a readily available fuse holder. I used a wire tap like alarm guys use, hooked a ordinary in line fuse holder to that, then grounded the other end to the main dash ground, that is conveniently located right under the left, and right kick panel:
Passenger side shown, because it's easier to take a picture of, but drivers side basically the same. Then I left enough wire that I could pull my fuse holder out of the kick panel, but still tuck it back:
So then I simply insert the fuses when removing the doors, and remove them when reinstalling. The fuses fit nice and tight and its secure enough that its not going to come loose if I take my Bronco over any "sweet jumps"
How the system works:
Really pretty simple. I will give the engineers some credit here. There are 2 door modules on the vehicle (regardless of 2 or 4 door). Those modules are not mounted in the doors (as they commonly are in other vehicles) but in the driver and passenger kick panel/cowl/a pillar area. Why? So they can report over CAN that the doors have been removed by the customer, as this vehicle was designed to be able to do. So how does each door module "know" that the doors have been removed purposefully and there isn't just a complete electrical failure in the door?
Each door connector contains a "shorting bar" like the one you can see above. It shorts pin 7 to pin 8 in that connector when it is disconnected. One pin is purely a sensing circuit from the door module, the other is the door's ground. Don't remeber which, and not important at this point. What is important is that the door module MUST see ground on this circuit to flag the door as "removed by customer". Otherwise it will assume electrical faults exist. When it barks those faults over CAN every other module in the vehicle takes a bite and starts whining, and nannying. So no big deal right? 20 years from now when this thing is rusty and used it will be that guys problem...well my Bronco is brand new, and it spent 123 days in a "climate controlled storage facility". My passenger side doesn't work. Corrosion? Bent pin? Doesn't matter to me. I live in Wisconsin, and if the shorting bar doesn't work after 123 days of climate controlled storage, it won't work after a Wisconsin winter...so I figured out a workaround! Mine isn't the only way...you guys out there feel free to experiment!
My solution:
In this diagram you can see i have pointed out the shorting bar for the drivers door. It connects the VT/GY wire coming from the DDM to ground (VT=violet, thats purple in "non metric" colors. GY=grey, thats the same, standard or metric). Note that wire occupies pin 5 of c258B. This is the grey connector on the DDM. Also note that the "door off" sensing wire for the drivers REAR door is pin 4. Mine is a 2dr so I don't have to worry about that one, but "moar door" folks will.
Passenger side:
Passenger side ia a mirror image of the drivers. Front door sense wire is again pin 5 of the grey connector, only this time the wire is blue. Rear door (if I had one, which I do not) would again be pin 4 of the same connector. Heres connector views for the DDM/PDM
DDM:
PDM:
So here's what I did:
I thought about wiring some kind of toggle/rocker/dip switch in there...far to elaborate for my purpose, and if within reach I might accidentally flip it while the doors are off, or whatever...thats just overthinking it. I think Ford had a good concept w/the shorting bar idea, just unreliable execution 'cause they had to make it something that didn't require an extra step from the customer when removing the door. So I figured I could use a readily available fuse holder. I used a wire tap like alarm guys use, hooked a ordinary in line fuse holder to that, then grounded the other end to the main dash ground, that is conveniently located right under the left, and right kick panel:
Passenger side shown, because it's easier to take a picture of, but drivers side basically the same. Then I left enough wire that I could pull my fuse holder out of the kick panel, but still tuck it back:
So then I simply insert the fuses when removing the doors, and remove them when reinstalling. The fuses fit nice and tight and its secure enough that its not going to come loose if I take my Bronco over any "sweet jumps"
I now get no errors/warnings at all w/doors off. When starting the vehicle i get a single notice that doors are disconnected (duh). And if I remove my seatbelt w/the engine running, it warns me that the engine is running, just like it would if I opened the door w/the engine running, so it must use the seat belt switch in lieu of a door ajar switch...I would consider that "normal operation". As I said above, mine is a 2dr. Maybe a 4dr owner will try this and leme know the results?
EDIT:
Normal operation:
So as I stated above the dash tells me that the doors are electrically disconnected, and warns me that the engine is running if I unbuckle the driver's seatbelt while running...makes sense. One weird thing I noticed, and might be totally unrelated, was that after i did this setup I had to take it out for a drive to make sure all was good right? Well I had a few errands to run. They were "offroad only" errands for those of you I can already hear. One errand was get gas for the lawn mower, so I put my gas can in the back of the Bronco, but, curiously, I had to unlock the gate to open it. Then when I reached the "offroad only" gas station I had to unlock the gate again. Upon returning home the gate was again locked...no big deal of course, but w/out any doors I dont have a lock button other than on the fob, which I certainly didn't push by accident three consecutive times in a row. So I think that it locks the tailgate automatically when the doors are off? Anybody else have this?
SECOND EDIT:
Dummy plugs:
Alot of posters in this thread showed some interest in creating "dummy plugs" that would plug in in place of the door connector and serve the same purpose. I made some, and while slightly more elegant than my 1st solution, they are somewhat pricey, and a little time consuming to make...but very doable. Post #57 of this thread:
Sponsored
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