04-98 Focus Estate Boot Lock Fault

[sheriff076]

Hello,

I have the above car, 2004 model, with a rear lock fault. I'll try to summarise:

Central locking works on the rest of the doors with fob and driver lock button, no issues.

Dashboard boot release fails to open the boot door

Key fob boot release button fails to open boot door

Manually using the key in the boot lock does open the boot door

Any thoughts on where to start fault finding? Up until now I have not had any electrical faults to note.

Thanks,

Regards,

Sheriff

[gregers]

well after suffering something very similar over the last few days on my smax,i decided to take apart my rear hatch to check my switch,after checking everything i decided to check THE 1ST THING I SHOULDVE CHECKED and that was the wires in the gaitor.

yep 3 broken/frayed so soldered back up and all working again,so about 3 hrs later all was back together.

[sheriff076]

Thanks,

It had crossed my mind that the wires may be buggered. I'll pop the gaiter off 1st and take a look.

Cheers

Regards,

Sheriff

[Stoney871]

The insulation on the wires gets brittle and repeated opening/closing the boot bends the cores until the wires snap, a very common problem.

Hopefully it's this rather than the lock solenoid (had this on my mk1).

If the solenoid has blown (usually the broken wires shorting across causes this) it's straightforward to change the lock mechanism over.

The key mech is seperate to the lock unlike on the hatchbacks which are one unit so just a case of finding a good second hand unit on eBay and about 15-20 minutes with a socket set and pliers.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Ford OC mobile app

[sheriff076]

Solved!!!

I checked the gaiter area and found no breaks (some exposed insulation cracks, now repaired). The culprit turned out to be the lock body connector male and female parts with signs of corrosion and a break on one pin, see pic below.

Realising I needed to get a replacement plug from the scrap yard, I opted to buy the whole lock unit and plug from a donor car for £15. My original lock may be ok but for that that money, I've saved my time trying to get corrosion out of the socket hole.

Thanks for the suggestions.

Regards,

Sheriff

[Stoney871]

Good result.

You can see what I meant about the wiring in the gairer though.

The cracked insulation plus a bit of water can cause major trouble.

I had wiper, brake light, lock and demister all go at the same time.

It was a right mess of tarnished wires and black residue which took a couple of hours to patch.

Sent from my SM-G900F using Ford OC mobile app