Original Poster: John H. AKA wvcat
Difficulty: 7 out of 10
Time to install: Approximately 6-8hrs
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Editors Note: It may be easier to swap the dash wiring harness from the truck donating the doors, but in this situations, the power window harness didn’t have 4wd and the existing 4wd harness didn’t have the power options. Thus, the original poster chose to modify his existing harness.
Brief Explanation: This is a how to to add power doors to your truck. Power windows, door locks and mirrors. I am not going to cover adding the individual components here because I added complete power doors to a project truck. In my case I am working with a 2000 Ranger XL 4wd but most rangers should be similar with the exception of different color wires on different years. Before you even start consider the following. If you hook something up wrong you could damage the computer components in your truck and therefore this is a do at your own risk type mod. Basically you will be adding a wiring harness, 5 relays, hooking in to the fuse box for 3 separate power supplies and adding wires to the gem module. When complete the system will work as if factory installed and will even include the auto down function on the drivers door window as well as the accessory delay relay that allows you to roll the windows up after you have removed the keys. (this cancels when you open your door) It would be possible to make your own harness and install it without removing the dash however I removed the dash and used a factory donor harness that had power doors from a 2wd truck. If you could economically find a factory harness swapping it in would save you some work. I had no luck finding one. Ok here goes.
Tools Needed:
Typical hand tools
Wire Strippers
Wire Crimpers
Parts Needed:
Donor Harness (with power options and relays)
Butt connectors
Electrical Tape
Power Doors
I am not going to cover removing the dash but here is the factory dash removed without any modifications to the harness.
I removed the factory harness from the dash. Note the door plug near the fuse box with only 4 wires on the drivers side.
After dismantling the donor harness here is what is required for the power doors.
Here’s the difference between a power door plug and a manual door plug. Note the wires on the power door plug donor I have folded over, these are already existing in your truck.
The first step is to remove the wires one by one from the donor harness plug and install them in the correct position in your factory harness plug. If you look at the picture above you will see a red piece of plastic inside the plug, this has to be removed and then use a tiny screwdriver or scribe to push the tab back and remove the wire. This is what a removed wire looks like.
After you transfer all the wires this is what it should look like. Don’t forget to reinstall the red plastic lock into the plug. Note the 4 factory wires and the 9 you just added.
I just taped the new harness to the existing harness.
You will be required to add this relay box to the center of the dash with 3 mini relays and then 2 other relays. Note the wires going over the black relay box, they go to the gem. The all unlock relay is on the bottom right (note the black relay with red in the plug.
Unfortunately this is all the pictures I can find so I’m not sure if I have any more but this will get you the basic idea and concept of how to do it. Between these pics and the following wiring diagrams you will have all the required information on how to do it. A big thank you goes out to Ramsey Leonard for providing me with the wiring diagrams.
You will need a donor harness with relays or…
the factory wiring pins for the door plugs-approx 20 that snap in
the factory wiring pins for the gem module-approx 5 that snap in
the factory wiring pins for the fuse box-approx 3 that snap in
the factory relay box behind the dash with relays and wiring ends that snap in
the 2 relays for the auto down and accessory delay with plugs and wires
miscellaneous wiring supplies such as butt connectors, tape, strippers, and crimpers as well as a lot of time to have your truck down, its not really an afternoon job.
Good Luck,
John