The owner of the vehicle stated his trunk ajar light would not turn off and the convertible top would not open. The shop already installed a latch and told me they inspected the wiring harness.
Fault codes were stored in the CVM but none proved to be helpful.
I went directly to the latch and backprobed pin 2. My DVOM displayed 0 volts. I found the harness inside the trunk on the body side, backprobed the same wire and found 12 volts.
While monitoring the light on the dash indicating the trunk was open I toggled the wire to ground. The light went off. I then had the shop owner operate the top with this wire grounded and the top functioned.
I pulled the harness away from the trunk hinge and tugged on the wires. What did I find.. broken wires in the rubber conduit.
This was a life saver! I had the same exact situation on my 2001 325Cic. I checked the wires in the trunk harness and voila- a broken wire. Quick fix to a difficult (for me) to diagnose problem. Thanks.
Glad to hear. Thanks for the feedback.
Thank you for posting this! I had the same problem and after replacing the trunk latch to find out that still didn’t solve the problem. I found this article and that answered my question as to what the F$#@! was wrong!. Much appreciated. Riding with the top down smiling!!
Spot on! I had 3 severed wires and 3 wires that were exposed, but not yet broken on my 2001 325ci. I wrapped the wires with plenty of electrical tape as I was reconnecting them. I’m sure they’ll just break in a different spot next time, but hopefully not with the top down!
I had two wires skinned and one in two on my 2001 330ci. Thanks for posting.