joatmon wrote: ↑Wed Mar 30, 2022 4:36 am
zbyers wrote: ↑Wed Mar 30, 2022 3:12 am
probably in the hatch. I don't know where the connector is in the vehicle.
That's what I was thinking. The trim on the hatch is easier to remove than inside the car body. A relative's 03 Matrix needs a new hatch, so I' might be attempting a junkyard swap.
Did the swap. The replacement hatch came with the wire harness, so I used the wires that came with the new hatch. I pulled the top half of the drivers side rear pillar trim and dropped the headliner a little, wasn't that hard. It connects just under the drivers side fixed quarter window. On reassembly, was a little tricky getting the pillar trim to engage with the bottom half, seems designed to have the top half go on before the bottom half. It was also pretty easy to swap the locks between the two hatches.
Later, did a test, and it would have been easier to disconnect the wire harness inside the hatch and pull it out, as long as you attach strings to the connectors on the new hatch so you can pull the car's harness back in. Need 2 strings, one for the big wire bundle, a second for the CHMSL(brake) wire. Inside the hatch, the main wire bundle has only one anchor point, which is relatively easy to access, and the CHMSL wire has no anchor.
Also learned 2 things.
- You can replace the metal part of the hatch without replacing the hatch glass. The glass's hinges attach to the car, the nuts on the hinges' bolts are under the headliner while the hatch attaches to the glass's hinges. The bolts that attach the metal hatch to the hinges for the glass are easily accessible.
- About 2/3 of the weight of the hatch assembly is the glass/wiper motor. Just the metal part is surprisingly light