Corolla Door Loom Cut!

the merchant

Ever heard of this?

The other day my da asked me to take a look at why his central locking had stopped working on his 2003 corolla. I also noticed that the electric window had stopped working on the passenger side. After doing the usual checks, I noticed that of the ten or so wires in the loom to the door, about eight were broken, as was the rubber boot that they go through.

I know that cutting the loom to the drivers door in a Transit will often open the central locking and theives know this, maybe this is was attempted in this case.

BTW, a new loom for the door is €500+vat so I might try to buy a second hand door.

ninty9er

That's the kind of trick that must send thieves wettting themselves, just like the golfclub and wehhl trick on some of the BMWs

DublinDilbert

the merchant wrote:

Ever heard of this?

The other day my da asked me to take a look at why his central locking had stopped working on his 2003 corolla. I also noticed that the electric window had stopped working on the passenger side. After doing the usual checks, I noticed that of the ten or so wires in the loom to the door, about eight were broken, as was the rubber boot that they go through.

I know that cutting the loom to the drivers door in a Transit will often open the central locking and theives know this, maybe this is was attempted in this case.

BTW, a new loom for the door is €500+vat so I might try to buy a second hand door.

Yep it happen to a friend of mines Toyota landcruser in maynooth... the garage said that the new landcrusers have a metal plate to stop this happening... I'm not sure if it works, but apparently on some models it can cause the central locking to open...

Depending on how they hacked the harness they may have damaged other electroincs in the car, by shorting the wires together...

Umm I'm not sure if getting a new door would help the harness is usually all one piece.... You would end up splicing it back into the car harness inside the car...

What i would do if it was my car i would replace the rubber booth and splice it back together, wire by wire, and check that everything still works... as i said above there maybe damage to other things or fuses gone... a new boot and a good neat splice job should do it


On an aside note this is why they do not allow the CAN bus from the vehicle to go out into the wing mirror, cause if someone got access to the CAN lines they would be able to open the car... so they usually run the LIN bus to the wing mirrors for this reason...

mloc123

I had heard about it but not sure what cars it worked on, apparantly its getting more common.

the merchant

Cheers Dilbert,

The loom has two block connectors under the kick panel inside the door and to be honest I'm not sure if I fancy splicing, could be a messy job, (for me anyway).

Tipsy Mac

Yeah strange one.

Why would someone bother cutting it when they can simple smash the window? The car can't be robbed due to the immobilizer and the audio equipment is built in so really no point in doing this at all, I think thieves in Ireland are generally slow and unaware of the introduction of the immobilizer.

The tax man

Had a drill nicked out of the back of my Ford Connect van two weeks ago. Prícks cut through the drivers door loom with a hack saw blade. Ford make these things a piece of piss to brake into. Yet for the back door at least they have a nice little fix to the problem, that they'll sell and install for you for a nice price.

Why would someone bother cutting it when they can simple smash the window?

Smashing a window makes noise and attracts attention while cutting the loom pops the locks without any noise. They use this way just to enter the car and steal what they can get.
They didn't even root through my van,just popped the central locking straight into the back and walked away with a few hundred quids worth of drill and accessories.

franksm

What gobshytes -hope karma eats their ass

Anyway, if you can get access to the wires (open the door fully with the checkstrap removed) and if you're anyway handy with soldering I'd be inclined to just replace them - they are only wires after all.

One thing to be wary of is if the car has side airbags, in which case there might be a sensor in the door. A failed sensor may screw up the SRS/airbag system and may require a reset once the wires have been fixed.

milltown

The tax man gets robbed?

The worm has turned! LOL

FX Meister

DublinDilbert wrote:

On an aside note this is why they do not allow the CAN bus from the vehicle to go out into the wing mirror, cause if someone got access to the CAN lines they would be able to open the car... so they usually run the LIN bus to the wing mirrors for this reason...

What is the can bus? and the lin bus for that matter?

rebel.ranter

We have had about 4 Toyota Landcruisers broken into in this way. All 2004 models. We have cages in the back of them now with an independent lock on them as a result.

colm_mcm

New Land Cruisers do not have a metal plate protecting the wiring, instead Toyota have modified the loom so that all power in the central locking circuit is cut off iff the wires are cut.

It is possible to repair the wiring on the Corolla, but it is quite time consuming.

the merchant

Thanks for the response guys.

OK, so the wiring has been repaired, (I actually got an electrician mate to do it... a nice tidy job he did too), and everything except the central locking is working. The large 30amp fuse for the c/l had blown but even when replaced there's nothing. There is about 8 volts constant at the c/l motor in the door but that doesn't change when I operate the c/l. I'm thinking that there may be a damaged relay but I have no way of locating the relay for the c/l - it's not in the handbook.

Any ideas?

Cheers.

DublinDilbert

FX Meister wrote:

What is the can bus? and the lin bus for that matter?

CAN = Controller Area Network, designed for high speed connection of the major ECUs in the vehicle.... it uses very specific signaling and operates well above 100Kbits / second.. All sorts of information is transfered of the CAN bus, once you connect onto it with a PC and the correct interface you can pretty much do anything, including locking / unlocking doors ect....

LIN Local Interconnect network... low speed bus for talking to small ECUs such as stepper motors, electric mirrors... In terms of timing and bit patterns its similar to Rs232 from a PC, except the voltage levels are different... designed for low cost nodes, main processing in the node would typically cost less than $1!

DublinDilbert

the merchant wrote:

Thanks for the response guys.

OK, so the wiring has been repaired, (I actually got an electrician mate to do it... a nice tidy job he did too), and everything except the central locking is working. The large 30amp fuse for the c/l had blown but even when replaced there's nothing. There is about 8 volts constant at the c/l motor in the door but that doesn't change when I operate the c/l. I'm thinking that there may be a damaged relay but I have no way of locating the relay for the c/l - it's not in the handbook.

Any ideas?

Cheers.

Hi,

Thats what i was kinda afraid of... Where are u measuring the 8V? is it across the central locking solenoid/motor?

When you replaced the 30A fuse it didn't blow again? ( a good sign )

Is there any chance that the central locking needs to be reprogrammed after having it's power disconnected??

I'm not 100% sure how toyota do their central locking, but i'd guess there's some sort of power semi conductor driving the various solenoid/motors, these are very hard to protect against a short circuit like this.... maybe it is a relay like you said...

All of the inputs should be ok, as these are normally design protected against a short to B+ and short to B-, it is the power outputs which are much harder to protect...

If the system doesn't need re-programming, it might be time to try get some schematics, and narrow down the fault... if you find them in electronic format, post them here and a few of us will have a look over them..

the merchant

I know it's been ages since I last posted about this bit I just fixed the problem.

Someone told me that it could be a faulty "Integration relay", I priced this from Toyota and it was over €300 so I just left it. Picked one up in Duffy's breakers last week (€50), plugged it in and bingo - central locking working again.

Thanks for all the help anyway guys, much appreciated.