This GMC Yukon came in with the complaint that the power windows and power seats did not work and the Airbag light was on. Checking the fuses found that the SIR or airbag light 15 amp fuse was blown.
I also found that the 50 amp MBEC fuse was blown.
I replaced both fuses and could not get either one to blow again. The customer remined me that I had changed the SIR fuse for him before. He also stated that he believed it had something to do with the power seats. In particular the driver’s power seat. I thoroughly inspected the wiring under both seats and found no shorts in the wiring. Thinking about how he insisted that it had something to do with the forward/reverse motion of the driver’s seat the next thing that came to mind was the wiring under the carpet that could be affected by the driver’s feet positions. That meant taking a look at the wiring under the carpet. You can see the shorted harness that I found in the next picture.
The wires would short out on the metal bracket that I am pointing to in the next picture. The location is just under the upper edge of the carpet and slightly to the right of the driver’s kick panel. A position where a person might have their left foot resting while driving.
I opted to use heat shrink tubing over the damaged spots on the wiring to reduce bulk. Also installing a splicing terminal at that location would create a rigid spot in the harness that would likely short out again in the near future. To do this I had to first remove the locking comb that secured the terminals in place.
Then I had to release the locking tab on the terminals that I wanted to remove from the connector body. After the terminals were removed it was just a matter of sliding a piece of heat shrink tubing over the terminal and down the wire to the damaged area. I repeated this for the three wires that had been damaged.
Wrapped the harness back up with tape.
Then installed split loom over the harness making sure that the spit in the loom was facing away from the bracket. Doing that would assure years of abrasion resistance.
Afterwards I finished the job by laying the carpet back into it’s proper position.