Driver door wire harness is shot

[Mickyblue]

Is it easy to replace? I know a junk yard where i can get one for 10$, but i have to pull it out myself, and mine is shot, both rear windows and locks dont work anymore and i know the wires are cracked/broken to peices.

What do you guys think, what should i do? I have a 96 4 door camry

[71Corolla]

Not that difficult to replace, but getting one from the junk yard is hit and miss, you could end up with the same problem or worse. Or you could get lucky and get a good one. Easy way to tell which wires are broken is to unwrap the harness, and pull on each wire, usually the bad ones pull right out. you can then solder in a new section of wire.

The way I repaired mine is I got a harness from the wreckers, cut my harness off a couple of inches back where the wires bend, then soldered in the donor harness using the part that does not bend. It was a lot of work because I had to solder every wire not only in the middle part of the harness, but also at the connectors. You can do the same thing I did, but only replace the wires that are broken, will save a lot of time. What I did was probably overkill but I'm guaranteed the harness will last for the life of the car because all the stressed sections of wire have been replaced.

[Mickyblue]

thats what my toyota mechanic told me, but i know how bad mine is already and i promise you one from a junk yard cant be as bad as mine, i mine, mine has wires missing, well basically 15 years and 237k miles of constantly opening and closing that door.

Is there another way of repairing the wires without sodering? How about the electrical crimper things?

[71Corolla]

Crimping is not the best method IMO, prone to failure and they take up a lot of space, if you have 10-12 of them the harness will be huge. Take a look in the salvage yard, you might find a good harness, unwrap the electrical tape on the connector side (kick panel/fuse block) far enough to where it exposes the one end of the rubber boot. Then pull on each wire with needle nose pliers to find any broken ones.

[BMR]

Yeah, I'd stay away from those crimp-on splicers. Best to solder and shrinkwrap those joints. They take a beating in that door hinge area.

[BamZipPow]

Another way to seal the joints besides using shrink wrap is using the liquid electrical tape. Just make sure the surface isn't all grimed/greased up...

[Mickyblue]

Okay. I'm mainly worried about how to access the wire harness on each connectors end. And pulling it out of the door. Is there any tricks to doing this

[Mister_Perkins]

Pull it through the body to the door. It should pull right through.

If I were you ide cut the loom apart and, slide some shrink tubing over the wire, and Solder the broken wire(s). Then tape the harness back together and pull it back through the door.

/done