Ground Breaking Discovery! At least for me

[sethhatfield]

I finally found the source of my constant driver's door problems. It acts stupid most of the time. It will think it is not closed and leave the lights on. It will allow the window to roll down but then not have the will to roll it up again (this is awesome in the rain). It has kept the doorlock button on the center console from operating normally also. The green window lock light blinks sometimes. That's when you know your day is going to suck.

The source of it is inside the wire harness plug inside the door hinge held on with a single 8mm hex head screw. The thing was riddled with corrosion!! How moisture got in there I have no idea. I just cleaned out with some aerokroil and a toothbrush and it is fixed.

[srmmmm]

I had a similar experience with my engine harness. A week after a flash flood driving incident, my dashboard display showed all kinds of warnings and fail-safe messages. The dealer checked it and said according to the stored error codes, the vehicle shouldn't have been running at all! As it turned out, all of the harness connectors showed no evidence of ever having any sealing grease in them. Water had gotten in the connectors and shorted out sections of the engine harness! The dealer said mine was not the first they had seen with that condition - apparently there was some period of time during the 2002 model year production that someone forgot the dielectric grease!

Lucky for me my auto insurance covered the $1830 repair bill as "storm damage".

2002 X5 3.0 244,000 miles (build date 10/02)
2004 325i 109,000 miles