Birdie2000
Club Member
Is there anything that would cause multiple melted electrical connectors throughout a vehicle?
On our 2003 Suburban at work, the front power seats/seat heaters were working intermittently. I pulled the seat out and found that the main electrical connector on the bottom of the seat had a melted terminal, which was the big 12awg ground wire. The crimp looked weak on the pin on one side of the terminal, so I assumed that the crimp was loose which caused excessive resistance and it got hot. The damage was right inside the big connector, didn't go more than a half-inch up that single wire on each side of the harness. Fixed it and moved on.
We had another intermittent problem, the rear window wiper. So I figured I'd check this out too while I'm doing all this electrical work. Same damn problem, again on the ground wire! It was right in the factory bulkhead connector between the tailgate and the body. The ground pin was again melted all out. You can tell the power for the window defogger had also gotten hot because the wire is discolored for about and inch from the connector.
Now the thing is, both the seat and the rear wiper/defogger had been fixed before by both a bodyshop and a dealer tech. It's funny that I'm now fixing melted connectors causing the exact same symptoms we had in the past. These two things are on two completely different circuits as best I can tell.
My question is, is this just bad luck that the grounds in both of these body connectors melted in the same manner, or is there a bigger problem I should be looking for?
On our 2003 Suburban at work, the front power seats/seat heaters were working intermittently. I pulled the seat out and found that the main electrical connector on the bottom of the seat had a melted terminal, which was the big 12awg ground wire. The crimp looked weak on the pin on one side of the terminal, so I assumed that the crimp was loose which caused excessive resistance and it got hot. The damage was right inside the big connector, didn't go more than a half-inch up that single wire on each side of the harness. Fixed it and moved on.
We had another intermittent problem, the rear window wiper. So I figured I'd check this out too while I'm doing all this electrical work. Same damn problem, again on the ground wire! It was right in the factory bulkhead connector between the tailgate and the body. The ground pin was again melted all out. You can tell the power for the window defogger had also gotten hot because the wire is discolored for about and inch from the connector.
Now the thing is, both the seat and the rear wiper/defogger had been fixed before by both a bodyshop and a dealer tech. It's funny that I'm now fixing melted connectors causing the exact same symptoms we had in the past. These two things are on two completely different circuits as best I can tell.
My question is, is this just bad luck that the grounds in both of these body connectors melted in the same manner, or is there a bigger problem I should be looking for?
