2000 Winstar power door still not working!

[micheleinva]

About 6 months after purchasing our 2000 Winstar (back in Jan of 00) we started having problems with both automatic sliding doors. Motors and other things of the doors were replaced numerous times. Problems were always intermittent- doors would pop back open after closing, or remain slightly ajar. The driver side rear door is fine, but the passenger side still has the problems. I read somewhere where it might be the bracket? on the doors, and they need to be bent. Don't remember where I saw that suggested. But my husband and a friend physically lifted the door and tried to angle it (while on the car, still attached) and it did help some. Before, it would pop all the way back open, now it just pops open a little and is ajar. You have to push on the outside of the door near the top back to make it close completely- or take it off power sliding and close it manually (and they are heavy doors- too heavy for the kids to close). I refuse to take it to the dealer, since they had worked on this door at least 5 times already and never fixed it. I want advice and try to do it myself (well actually have my husband do it and a mechanic we use). Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[12Ounce]

I've "done" mine ... so far, so good.

Start off by cleaning and lubricating everything: ......door tracks, door seals, rollers, cables, plungers on switches, especially the seven pole switch on the front and the ajar switch at the rear.

After that, begin the adjusting .... takes a while to see "what all does what" ... but it's not overwhelming .... certainly you don't need to pay Ford for some non-service.

[lewisnc100]

What you're describing sounds like what I've had in the past and fixed. As the door closes there are two latches, the primary and secondary. After the primary latch catches it has a certain number of seconds for the secondary latch to catch. If it doesn't latch in that amount of time it quits to save the door motor and you hear a slight click/pop and the door opens slightly. But the primary latch is still engaged. You can then push from the outside to get the secondary latch to catch.

This is commonly caused by bad door fit. If you look at the door, the front of the door should be slightly inboard of the front doors and slightly outboard in the rear. This makes for less wind noise when driving and also takes less effort to pull the rear of the door closed into the secondary latch position. You can adjust this with the right torx wrenchs and adjusting the stikers and wedges. There is a very detailed adjustment procedure that lays all this out, might be worth the $24.95 to get an www.alldata.com subscription.

When mine started doing this my door fit was bad with the rear of the door being inboard. This caused too much resistance as the motor tried to pull the door closed and would get worse in hot weather. Since adjusting the door fit to Ford specs I haven't had this problem in 2+ years.