Yesterday, I repaired a defect in the wiring harness in my driver door. The symptom was some sort of sticky adhesive goo getting smeared on to the window glass whenever I would roll it down... daily, as I park in a parking garage with a card reader. Initially, I thought it must be some goo left over from assembly - I bought my car 10/20/07 and it's got parts dated 08 and 09 of 2007, so it's fresh. Seemed OK after a few days, but it came back after I got my windows tinted a couple weeks back. I couldn't chance this stuff affecting my tint, so I decided to fix it myself rather than wait for some dealer to look at it.

Here's what I found:

The foam padding on this bend had worn completely through even though the window had only been down maybe 10 times since I got the car, and the adhesive from the backing was sticking to the glass. Under the foam is the typical convolute tubing found everywhere in new cars, and it was making contact with the glass and had already put some fine scratches in the tint.

I think part of the problem is the short piece of semi-rigid sleeve to the right of the bend was forcing the section in to a tight angle, and it was pushing out in to the glass. I thought I could just remove the foam padding that was causing the goo to get on the window, but that would have done nothing for the scratches.

My fix was simple. Remove the sleeve that was causing the strange angle, remove the foam that was causing the goo, and relocate the harness with convolute tubing to a place where it wouldn't touch the glass again. I did this using two tiny nylon zip ties to pull the harness closer to the door handle rod:


Another view:


All finished and trimmed up:


By leaving the loop in the zip tie around the door handle rod loose, there's very little friction on the rod, so you can't really tell anything is there. The zip tie around the harness is TIGHT so it won't wiggle around much. No clearance problems, and so far it works great!

 

I have the same problem but on my passenger side. I've always wondered what caused it. Now I know. Thanks for the DIY. I'll try fixing it sometime.

 

i don't recommend putting that zip-tie on those door lock actuator rods. You'll put stress on it and might break something.

 

Nice job on the DIY fix. Simple and very cheap. Don't worry about pulling on the rod it only moves a little bit and your wire tie looks loose enough not to cause problems and it's pulling the rod deeper into the plastic retaining clip not out of the clip.

 

cycoxtr, I'm glad this may have helped you identify your problem, but I'm bummed that your problem is on the pass side... that means I've got to check that side soon, too. Crud...

koolkevin1107, you're right there is some stress on that rod that didn't used to be there, but like claymore is saying, it's not much. The clips typically used on these rods are pretty robust, and they only act to hold the rod in to the levers on the ends. You can see one easily by popping out the door handle. A little dab of lithium grease would probably make any drag go away, and removing the semi-rigid sleeve really did wonders to loosen up the harness. BTW, how did you mount your license plate like that? Have you got a thread that shows how it's done? TX has an ugly front plate law too, but I'm going without until I sort out a fix.