MotherFing Door Ajar BS... Anyone?

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kb0nly

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Ok here is the deal, my son owns a 05 Liberty Sport, and one day he got in to drive home from school and the Odometer display keeps going from the mileage to Door... His can't tell you which door, so it just says Door and thats it.

I did all the usual, WD-40 in the latches, worked the doors open and closed about 40 times, slammed em until i about broke stuff cause we were getting fed up with it. Nothing helped.

Disconnected the battery overnight, didn't help.

Went to the service manual it says that when the door is closed the switch presents an Open circuit, when the door is open its a Closed circuit. And it just closes that switch to ground when the door is open. So i figured thats easy enough to troubleshoot which door it is, just unplug one door latch/lock actuator module at a time until the door message goes away right? Wrong...

Tore apart the drivers side door, unplugged it, started jeep, still stuck on Door. Did the same thing with each door one door at a time restarting the Jeep each time to cycle the key and hopefully reset whatever is going on, still no luck.

I looked at the wiring between the door and the body on every door i don't see any issues. And my though is since its an open circuit when closed then a broken wire wouldn't cause this, only a wire shorted to ground would cause it. So i checked every wiring passthrough point, painstakingly went over every wiring harness i could access, removing interior trim panels etc, i can't find any wiring issues.

So my next thought is it must be the BCM, because before the Door message issue he was having an issue where his dome lights would dim down but not shut off after closing the doors. So i checked all the grounds near the hood release where the BCM and Power Junction Block all ground to, took them off one by one, a little scotch brite to shine them up and the surface they were against, reinstalled them, checked for continuity from each of them to the battery negative post and everything looks great, less than 1 ohm resistance from the battery to those points, can't ask for much better then that.

I checked all the connectors on the back of the JBM, removed them, made sure there was no corrosion or issues and replaced. I took apart the large body wiring connector at the floor by the hood cable since thats an area that can get wet from snow on your boots etc, that looked like new.

I went over every dang inch of this vehicle and i can't find any reason for this. So am i just left with a bad BCM??

If so he's screwed, cause i tried for two hours to get the BCM out of this thing, followed the factory manual to the letter, but the JBM will not come out of there, the only way i can see its possible is to remove the brake light switch which your not supposed to do, and possibly the steering column. Otherwise a sawzall and chop off the lower part of the dash to allow it to come down and out. Seriously there is not enough room to turn it, pull it, push it, nothing. It won't do anything more then wiggle around about a half inch in all directions. So i don't see how you remove the JBM. I was hoping to get the BCM in the window of where the fuses are to remove it and sneak it out off the JBM but no go, there is four screws holding the BCM to the JBM and i can only get the two rearward screws out, the front two are still way up in the dash no matter how i position it. I nearly grabbed a sawzall and MADE room.

So any suggestions, experience with this DOOR message, *********** it, gas to light the vehicle on fire or what?

Currently he can't really do much with the vehicle and hes bummed beyond belief because he paid for this vehicle himself. The dome lights won't go off when your driving, they will time out after you remove the key and lock it though, takes like ten minutes, the doors don't auto lock because it thinks one is open, and if you lock the thing it thinks someone is trying to break in and the lights are on and such. Its just an electrical mess because of the DOOR status.
 

sota

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did you check the tailgate? it can be popped *just* enough to trip the switch but not look like it's open.
 

kb0nly

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Yep, i checked that. And the message changes.

On his when you open the rear glass the message is GLASS, when you open the rear gate then the message says GATE. But its stuck showing DOOR, and his doesn't tell you what door exactly.

On my 03 it tells me drivers door, passengers door, front and rear, etc. So i know its at least one of four doors or the wiring to one of the four doors but thats all i have to go on.

Unplugging all four doors should have defeated all the door ajar switches, but it still shows Door. I went over ground wires, connections, wiring, i went over harnesses and looked for anything rubbed, broken, damaged, etc etc etc.. Nothing found.

The only thing i can think of is its a bad BCM?? But it doesn't seem to have any issue other then the stuck DOOR message and the dome lights weren't completely going off just dimming when running, and that was before the DOOR message problem came up.

However, i think i solved the issue with the dome lights not going completely off! All the bulbs were switched to LED bulbs, i put regular bulbs in and now they turn completely off when i rotate the stalk switch back to off, before they would just dim down. So i assume its the resistance of the LED lamps causing the issue, because a regular bulb will shut off all the way.

Also, doing some more testing i found that if you open and close the drivers side door without the key on the drivers door will trigger the odometer to light up when open, and soon as you close it the odometer goes off. So it appears the BCM is able to sense the drivers door opening and closing just fine. So its not the wiring to drivers door for sure. So maybe its the wiring in one of the other doors? Because its stuck with that DOOR message the BCM thinks a door is open and i can't test which of the other three doors turns the dome lights on or off, they are just on until they time out because it already thinks a door is open. See my hair pulling issue?

I was looking at the FSM and i think the only other thing i can try is disconnecting C1 from the back of the JBM and then checking with a meter to see if any of the door ajar switch wires are showing a short to ground. I have to finish digging through the FSM and figure out which of the three connectors is C1 and which pins i am after. If i remember correctly one was green, one was black, and one was white for the body of the three bolted on connectors.
 

kb0nly

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Looking at the FSM the door ajar switch wires go to the C1 and C2 gray connectors on the BCM, not the connectors going into the JBM. But anyway, i will have to probe them and see if any of the door wires are shorted to ground.

Assuming none of the door ajar wires are grounded out then the only thing it can be at this point is a bad BCM. If thats the case i'm going to try again at getting the BCM out, might take a dremel and a cut off wheel but somehow i will get it out, and then i can look at that.

Looking at another BCM, pictures online, its a plastic case with the PCB inside, so i will try popping that open and trace back the pins from the door ajar inputs and really get into the little SOB if i have to go that far. I'm hoping its just a bad wire somewhere, and if it turns out to be one of the doors, i know its not the drivers door since that turns the Odometer on and off, i will probably just cut the wire and forget about it. The dome lights will still come on with the drivers door once i can eliminate the door ajar issue and that fix will be good enough for us, looking at the cost of a BCM and dealer programming i'm not about to drop $600 on this.
 

Billwill

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The BCMs seem to be pretty robust so I think you will probably manage to override the problem by cutting the suspect wire at the BCM connector as you are planning to do.

Once you have cut a wire that appears to then fix the problem.....check the floating wire for continuity to chassis/ground.
 

kb0nly

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I plan on checking the wires before cutting them, but once i find the offending wire i will certainly cut it and forget it.

The only thing i can figure out at this time is it is one of the three doors, front passenger, rear passenger, rear drivers. The drivers side door is clearly actuating the switch as it should, because the odometer goes on and off with the door opening and closing, so its seeing the input and the input state is changing.

I tried unplugging the other three doors since that was the quickest way i could do it in the cold the other day, pulled the inside door panel off and unplugged the door ajar/door lock actuator connector on each of them, but the door message didn't go away.

So it must be a fault in the wiring somewhere between the BCM and those three doors. So i plan on checking those three wires at the BCM connector to see if they have continuity to ground, if one of them does it gets snipped!

Now the problem is if none of them have continuity to ground... Well then... It has to be the BCM because thats the only thing left. I tried to get the BCM out today, but after two hours of cussing i gave up on it and put it back together. Just couldn't get the JBM/BCM combo moved to any position that allowed removal. So if the wire testing shows its the BCM then the dremel tool is coming out to make some modifications to get that SOB out of there.
 

Billwill

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Sounds like you have the Electrical theory sorted out.

Do you not have the KJ Service Manual that gives you advice on how to remove the BCM?
You obviously have the wiring diagrams.

I will look through the 2005 Service Manuals to see how to remove the BCM but maybe you should first practice removing one from a Breaker Yard...same year/model obviously.

There are no wiring diagrams that I have ever seen to show what is inside the BCM...it only shows as a Black Box in the wiring diagrams with lines going in and lines going out.!:Insane:
 

kb0nly

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I have the full FSM, but it didn't match his BCM at all. The 05 FSM shows three screws that have to be removed, his had four, and on top of that his has this odd factory tab coming off the bar that has the hinges for the swing down knee panel. This long tab with a mounting hole in the end of it reached in towards the front and made a turn upward, there was nothing mounted to it but it was part of the plastic dash itself. With that there you could not remove the one connector from the back of the JBM or get the JBM out. I took a Milwaukee Hackzall to it tonight with a short blade and zipped it off and the JBM/BCM combo pretty much fell out after that. The FSM doesn't show that tab, doesn't mention anything mounted to that tab, but its 100% in the way, we spent hours trying to Jenga the JBM around that tab. After cutting it off it took ten minutes to get the JBM out, swap the BCM, and put it back in. However that sadly did absolutely nothing to fix the problem and i started another thread about the electrical issue so hopefully someone can help there, because we are stumped and i am pissed to the point of wanting to take a gallon of gas and a match and let it burn.
 

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