wiring questions? where do they go are they important.

[foamy]

i know my welds look like crap and the paint doesn't match but its gonna be under the carpet Anyway. Ive been repairing lots of rust in the floors and have the whole interior out. i found a brown wire on both sides near the front outer corners that is not connected on either side. i also found a pair of wires that the connector is missing and the 3rd one i cannot remember if it was actually connected when i took apart the interior. does anyone know where these wires go or if there needed?

[Shawn D.]

IIRC, these are the ground wires you need to connect to the door switches when you are implementing door open mod that comes on Euro cars, but which is not on US-spec cars. It allows you to operate the power windows by having a door open when the ignition is off.

[Mike W.]

Quoting our own RonW. And a great upgrade IMO.

Posted by RonW on October 25, 2001 at 20:32:23:
(posted from: ool-18b9f38e.dyn.optonline.net (24.185.243.142))
Even if my car is off, whenever I open a door, I can use the power windows. Very handy.

I just added this feature to my US '86 535i. It turns out that most of what you need is already in place- I guess this was a feature available in Europe but not the US.

There's an empty relay socket on the firewall above the driver's kick panel. It has a red wire that goes to two terminals, two brown & violet wires that go to one terminal, and two green & red wires that go to one terminal.

Here's all you need to do:
-Find the other ends of the brown & violet wires, splice one into the brown & violet wire at one of the door jamb switches, and tie off the other one so it can't short against anything. On my car, one wire was tucked below the passenger's footwell speaker. The other was under the driver's footwell carpet, near that speaker- I think it should've been tucked into the speaker compartment, but it wasn't.
-Put a regular relay (like the power window relay) into the socket.
You're done! When you open a door, you should be able to adjust the windows. In Europe, you had to open either of the two front doors, but you should be able to use any door. If you have illuminated switches, they should turn on when you open the door.
Hope this helps someone.
PS- The sunroof is NOT on the same circuit- you still have to start the car to use that.

[foamy]

At some point I did the mod to have the windows work with the door open but it did not use those wires. That's a check on the 2 brown ones. I'm thinking maby the pair that has no connector might be the old speaker wires and im not sure about the one in the middle

[foamy]

i figured out the 3rd wire. it went to the seat belt buckle