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View Full Version : E36 Central Locking problem - no fuses blown, trunk harness fixed



limenuke
02-25-2012, 04:02 PM
[Resolved]

Symptoms: None of your interior power locks work. Your door's keyholes do not activate power lock system. Your fuses are fine. Your remote keyless entry system still works and all of your doors respond to it.

Probable Solution: Credits to this guy http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=442882&highlight= and NomadE30 for helping me out.

The problem happens in older E36s with rust along the bottom, allowing water to get under the carpets. It causes 7 Red/Green wires inside a black plastic connector to rot out completely, leaving no electrical connection. To gain access to this plug, you'll need to pull up the carpet under the seats until you expose a hard white plastic coverish thing located underneath the carpet, just in front of the drivers seat.

At this point, I assume you are kneeling by the driver door opening, facing into the car. The white coverish thing will be towards the front of the car (your left) and the black plastic connector will be just right of the white cover thing, and towards you. The black plastic connector joins 7 Red/Green wires together and is attached to the chassis via a plastic, nutless bolt.

If you think that the wires are fine, give them a tug. You may be surprised to see that all 7 of the wires might fall out. My black connector was flooded with green copper oxide. I stripped all the wires down an inch, twisted them together, put a plug on them and then sealed the deal with tons of hockey tape and electrical tape.

Fixed my locks! :D



/===========================================Origina l Post ================================================== ========/

Hey everyone. I noticed that my central lock button, my driver+passenger door locks and my keyholes no longer trigger my central lock.

However, my central locking system (aftermarket, installed about 2 months ago) continues to work.

It seems to me my module is busted since I did tear open my trunk harness, patched up the jacketing of the wires, then replaced fuses 43 and 7. 35 must be fine since my remote power locks and my sunroof still work.

I'm thinking it's my module but it could be that one of my doors isn't registering as closed...but then I'm still doubtful my central lock remote would work. Regardless, does anyone have any ideas?

March 1st update

Fuel door NEVER locked with my aftermarket system. I did not wire it to (you're supposed to trigger lock+unlock at the same time), and as such, my fuel door only locked when I locked my trunk or driver door or something. This is not a problem.

My interior locks continue to be useless. The buttons, the driver door locks, the exterior keyholes do not trigger the central power locks as they should.

My battery also went dead overnight recently. I am not sure if that was becuase I may have left one of the aftermarket connections uncapped by accident (I fixed that) or because something in my car is draining current (which may explain why my power locks do not work).

My car currently draws 100mA or 0.1A when parked. Is this too much? I've disconnected the battery for the time being. I found out it's coming from Fuse 9, which I believe to be the radio. The radio was installed aftermarket by previous owner and is some flashy one...but it doesn't appear to be on. The PO did wire the car for subs, so maybe there's a short? I would assume that if there was a short...it would drain more than 100mA?

My next step is to pull the carpet below the drivers seat and see what's up.

Any further ideas, fellow e36 owners?

UPDATE
Latest update! I looked at the bentley manual and it shows that the central lock button and my door locks connect to the body control module at DIFFERENT PINS. The chances of both my wires going out at the exact same time is extremely slim. So I have concluded that I need to replace my GMIV module.

Hopefully this fixes everything!

fun2drive
02-25-2012, 09:21 PM
Be sure that your gas door actuator is also working. Any actuator will cause the central locking system to act up. You can unplug the connector to the actuator to test this...

limenuke
02-26-2012, 04:24 PM
Gas door actuator does not work! However, unplugging it did not fix my central locking problem. I still can't lock the car with the in-dash button or my door locks.

My fuel door doesn't lock properly. The locking pin looks like it attempts to lock but then stops and retracts...

tharepairguy
02-26-2012, 04:29 PM
I think the green/red wire is the constant 12v that goes to each actuator. That +12v signal is sent back on either the unlock or lock wire to the control module, triggering the other doors to do said action.

Check to see if that wire has +12v constant. Could be a fuse or the wire could have melted enough to have an open circuit. I had to replace the +12v constant wire all the way up to the connection under the carpet, in front of the drivers seat to the left.

Reason I say this is that none of the switchs work but your aftermarket system works fine. I would imagine that your aftermarket system was installed under the glove box using the factory alarm wires. Your aftermarket system sends that +12v signal to the same triggers wires on the control module.

GL

limenuke
02-26-2012, 05:07 PM
Currently, my fuel door only has 12V sent when I do the unlock operation on my aftermarket remote. When I do the lock operation, I do not get 12V or -12V. So it is possible that my fuel door actuator is not broken, but whatever is sending the signal is broken.

The fuses 7 and 43 have been replaced.

So how do I access the wires you referred to, therepairguy ? What is the ZKE module I hear people talk about?

limenuke
02-28-2012, 01:01 PM
Bump for help!

limenuke
03-01-2012, 09:16 PM
Bump once more for help : (

limenuke
03-07-2012, 12:20 AM
Latest update! I looked at the bentley manual and it shows that the central lock button and my door locks connect to the body control module at DIFFERENT PINS. The chances of both my wires going out at the exact same time is extremely slim. So I have concluded that I need to replace my GMIV module.

Hopefully this fixes everything!

Hey Everyone! I fixed my problem today. I had the exact problem that this guy (http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=442882&highlight=) had.

It was hard to tell that the 7 pin wires had gone loose but I shook the connector a bit and all the wires fell out.

The problem happens in older E36s with rust along the bottom, allowing water to get under the carpets. You'll need to pull up the carpet under the seats until you expose a hard white plastic coverish thing located underneath the carpet, just in front of the drivers seat.

At this point, I assume you are kneeling by the driver door opening, facing into the car. The white coverish thing will be towards the front of the car (your left) and the black plastic connector will be just right of the white cover thing, and towards you. The black plastic connector joins 7 Red/Green wires together and is attached to the chassis via a plastic, nutless bolt.

If you think that the wires are fine, give them a tug. You may be surprised to see that all 7 of the wires might fall out. My black connector was flooded with green copper oxide. I stripped all the wires down an inch, twisted them together, put a plug on them and then sealed the deal with tons of hockey tape and electrical tape.

Fixed my powerlocks.

dadimad
01-20-2013, 02:05 PM
Hello, can anyone help me? My central locking works only from the passenger door - nor the driver's door or the aftermarket remote work. This happened yesterday, until then everything was fine, and I own the car for 5 years already! (I own an E36, year 1994, 318i, sedan)

warningimepic
01-20-2013, 02:53 PM
as noob as this sound can some one send me a pic of the trunk harness i been looking for it

Eric93se
05-09-2023, 09:40 PM
Bumping this old thread, only found it through google, had no fuses blown and the door locks were stone dead. First I replaced a known failing actuator and didn't solve the issue so suspected the GM4 but wanted to search more because our GM4 rarely goes kaput. I guess people in dry climates won't have this issue because it manifests when water can get in, I thought I fixed my sunroof leak but the damage must have been done. Water gets under the carpet and gets locked in there thanks to bmw's high quality carpet. If you have sluggish lock actuators not just one but multiple or all going a bit slow then this can be your issue till it fails completely. I also had water getting in at the top of the windscreen seal, that had been fixed a while back. There are 7 wires going into this comb power distribution. One wire is a bit thicker than the others so that one I stripped back a good inch and the rest I stripped back about 3/8" and spun them one by one onto the thicker wire. Please if you do this repair you must solder. When you solder there should be no copper showing to prevent it from corroding again. I used a lot of electrical tape to seal it off and tucked the wire bundle so that it was not on the very bottom of the floor.