How exactly does this thing work?

It's got this metal contact surface above and beside the pull down assembly that contacts two little metal thingies on the bottom of the lid. There's a black (or brown) wire and a yellow wire that attach to opposite ends of the surface. These wires run off and away from everything. Does this actually affect trunk operation?

How does the trunk motor know when to go up or down?

Which wires get powered to move the motor?

Any help would be appreciated. Especially if someone could give me a step by step of what happens during trunk operation. Thanks ahead of time.

 

Those contacts with the black and yellow wires provide power to your third brake light on the hatch.
There is a small switch on the side of the latch which is actuated by the '|_|' shaped hook on the bottom of the decklid.
Power is provided to the motor through a red wire from the fuse panel area which will have it's own fuse (which may be in a seperate holder beside the fuse panel). The wire which trips the remote release is, I believe, black.

Pete

 

Power to the hatch pull-down unit is red with white stripe (constant hot), which connects to a blue wire on the unit. There is a black wire to ground.

Look at the tech article I wrote on repairing the unit.

Lon Salgren
Top-Down Solutions

 

How hard is it to install and automatic hatch pull-down to a regular latch. I have an audio system that makes my hatch vibrate like crazy and I was hoping the electric version would pull the hatch tighter making it harder to vibrate. Any suggestions?

 

The motorized hatch pull-down unit has a different mount pattern than the non-motorized version. You'd have to fabricate mounting brackets or cut and weld in the ones from a motorized one. I haven't done the conversion, so I don't know if your existing brackets would need to be removed first, or if an adaptor could be made that would allow you to mount it to your existing brackets.

Lon

 

Thanks! Mabye I'll get to do a how-to on it...