[swick]

I have a 97 Windstar. I've been having problems with the door ajar indicator coming on and the dome light staying on all night. I narrowed the problem down to the rear hatch sensors mis-reporting the door ajar. For some ungodly reason the Dome light will stay on indefinietly - draining your battery - unless you yank the fuse. The door sensors are connected to the door locking mechanisms. The sliding door and the rear hatch each have two mechanisms / sensors. I had to remove the panel from the rear hatch by carefully pulling it away from the door. It is held in place by plastic push plugs. The can be pretty tough though - so be careful or you'll crack the panel. Once off you can access the sensors at either side of the door at the lock mechanism. Its hard to see but there is a little tab you need to pull up on in order to pull these off. I removed both sensors. No more problems with the dome light or door ajar indicator. Removing just these two sensor connections and your power locks / rear defrost will still work. If you don't care about those - there is a main connector on the drivers side of the rear door behind the panel near where the top and bottom panels meet. It's easier to get to and won't require taking the whole panel off. But like I said - you'll lose power locks / defogger / wipers. I just finished doing this myself. It took about 20 minutes. Most of that was just getting the panel off and then taking all those plastic tabs off the door and putting them onto the panel before putting the panel back on (it makes it much easier to put it back on - took about 30-seconds)