Q: Door ajar light always on leads to dead battery overnight. I may have found a temporary fix?
I have a 2005 Ford Escape XLT Sport 4WD with my door ajar light always on. It was a minor problem over the years, interior lights would rarely come on/off. Lately it's been really bad to the point it drained my battery numerous times. As a result, I got a new battery (Previous was running on 4 years and 3 months so I didn't feel bad). I found out this is a very, very common problem with Ford cars among Escapes and Explorers. There's a bunch of youtube videos saying the same solution to. One of the sensors is probably failing or broken and you have to connect certain wires together. Is that correct? But as for a temporary fix I took out my front interior light bulbs. Why? Because when my car is turned off, the front interior lights will come on and off. My real question - Is it only because of those lights turning on is what drained my battery? If my car is turned off and if it's confused on a door always being open when it's not, will it use up electricity from battery?
My car has 135000 miles.
My car has an automatic transmission.
The body control module can be scanned to look at the inputs of each door and find out what door is staying open. A generic scanner may only tell you a door is open. The WDS or other high quality scanner will be able to tell you what door is causing the light to come on and then you can see if it is a door ajar sensor on the latch or the latch and striker issue.
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