In this video I will show you how to remove and repair the driver master switch
in a Tahoe Suburban, in this case a 2012.
And also, if you've got to do the rear windows you can watch that video.
The problem? The windows don't respond to the switches. It's very common.
And there's two spring tabs holding it in the door.
So what we're going to do is get some pry bars gently under the front of that trim.
Push it all the way in so you're close to the base and then it pops up.
And this is where the springs are located on there.
And the plugs just have thumb releases.
So once you press those they pull right off.
Once you get those removed,
we're ready to go into the shop and take it apart and get to work on it.
So you can see this thing's pretty dirty.
What we're going to do is start with these three outer screws.
Those hold the switch assembly to the cradle or the trim piece.
Those have T15 size heads. They're a little bit larger.
Once you get those removed we can pull the switch assembly away from the trim .
And we can see just how dirty this thing really is.
So now what we need to do is pull these two smaller screws off the back.
Those are the T10 sized screws.
They're holding the back of the switch assembly.
And I've got a socket set here that we'll use for the T10 size.
Now the one screw I was able to get out without any problems.
You'll see the second one's a little bit recessed.
And so the socket's not long enough.
But it's easily adjustable if you have an Allen wrench.
I just loosen it up and it easily extends.
And then I'll tighten it back up.
And it should work just fine.
So we'll get that second screw out
We can remove the back of the switch assembly now.
And we can see, these are all the terminals that plug into the vehicle
on the top circuit board.
The bottom circuit board which is the contact circuit board,
That's got all the switch contacts on it.
It's held in by short screws with T10 heads.
And because they're similar, they've got the same head size,
we're going to separate them because they're slightly different length.
So you want to just make sure you separate those so they go back in the right place.
And once those are removed, we can remove the contact circuit board.
And we can see now we've got a switch assembly
with no electronics in it.
These green and white tabs those are the heads of the plungers that interact
with this contact pad Which in turn interacts with the contact circuit board.
And we'll get to that in a minute.
All of those contacts will have to be cleaned up
For now let's focus on the switch assembly.
It's filthy.
And it's probably hanging up a little bit because of all the dirt that's embedded in it.
So we're going to start by removing all these plungers.
It's not that difficult.
So once you pull those out,
it's all going to get cleaned up in soapy water.
And I'm spraying it with a cleaner.
And then just agitate it in some warm water.
That should be more than enough to remove all the grit.
And once you're done pull everything out.
And we're going to go ahead and put it out here on a paper towel to dry it out.
In the water you can see
there's quite a bit of filth that came off of that switch assembly.
And to speed things up,
I'm going to kind of use a blow dryer here to dry out the switch assembly.
You definitely want to get the moisture out before you put the electronics back on.
Check the action all these switches feel great now.
So we can put the plungers back in.
If you didn't take a photo of yours you can use my video to see where they go.
But i do recommend if you have a slightly different switch assembly,
That you take a snapshot of all the plungers.
This is what mine looks like when they're all in the right place.
Now let's focus on the contact circuit board and the contact switch pad.
And we're going to use a couple of cotton swabs,
some toothpaste and rubbing alcohol.
I'll try to give you a close-up view.
On the contact pad, you can see some of these contacts are dirtier than others.
And if you just wipe them, you really don't get anywhere.
In fact, if you even use rubbing alcohol it's not enough.
So that's what the toothpaste is all about.
It's going to do just what you think it's going to do.
It's going to scrub off
all the oxidation that's on those
that's preventing those from interacting with the contact circuit board.
And now the contact circuit board you can see some of these contacts
are also worse than others.
But we're going to scrub them all.
And the reason is, sometimes the film that's on there you really can't see it.
But it's there and it's preventing the switch from making contact.
And so we're going to go ahead and scrub all these off.
You can see quite a bit of soil came off on that cotton swab.
And you can see the color of the contact points have changed as well.
Once you clean them up they do get a little bit brighter.
And when we're done,
just use the rubbing alcohol to rub off all the excess toothpaste.
And we've got a clean contact circuit board
and a clean contact pad as well. So we can put those together.
Just match everything up.
And now they can go back into the switch assembly that's also cleaned up.
And remember these screws are slightly different lengths
so we kept them separated.
And I'll speed through this a little bit so you don't have to sit through it.
But we're going to put all these screws back in now starting from the center
and work our way out.
And once you've got those done
we're going to focus on these terminals.
Now the terminals also have to be cleaned.
These terminals plug into the top circuit board.
i'll give you a little close up here.
And then the top circuit board
has a lot of terminals that plug into the vehicle.
All of these have to be addressed and cleaned.
These look fairly oxidized.
A good terminal cleaner is DeoxIT.
It's great stuff. But you need to know that it is conductive.
So you don't want to just start spraying wildly on the terminals.
You want to spray onto an applicator, and then brush the terminals with it.
That allows you to control where the DeoxiT is going to go.
and what you're doing is
you're just going to spray the cotton swab
And then brush a light coating of the DeoxIT on all the terminals.
It not only cleans them up, but it prevents them from oxidizing down the road.
Once you've got those all cleaned up,
you can go ahead and plug the top circuit board
onto the terminals of the bottom one.
And i just quickly cleaned up this rubber seal that's on the back of the
switch assembly.
And we're gonna start with those two middle screws. Those are the smaller heads.
Once you've got those tightened down,
Now we can put the switch assembly back into the cradle or the trim piece.
And it's held into the cradle by the three larger screws with T15 heads.
And again, I'll speed through this a little bit.
We're just going to tighten those down with the larger socket.
Okay, and just as a last check we're going to see how the action is on the switches.
They look good. They feel good.
So this is ready to go back on the vehicle.
And they made that very easy.
You'll see that each of these plug bays
is labeled for the color code of the plug that's going to go into it.
You cannot get this wrong.
So just go ahead and plug each one into its respective slot.
And once you get all these in place,
just like we found it, we're going to put a twist on the harness
just to keep things nice and tidy.
Before we plug it back onto the door
we're going to check the function of all the switches.
Sure enough everything's working great.
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Thanks for watching