Hey guys, first time forum poster here. I just wanted to write up what I went through to fix my 2006 G35 Coupe trunk not opening. I bought the car with the trunk release button not working, knowing I could probably fix it. I was getting by with pulling the emergency trunk release, but that broke off, and I thought I was screwed.

I started by crawling through the back seat of the car, and removing the four bolts that hold in the trunk locking mechanism (10mm). I then got the trunk to pop up, so I could unplug the white and black connectors, and start to remove all of the clips from the trunk to get the wiring harness loose. I then pulled off the grommet from the right side of the car, and pulled the wiring harness out as far as I could. I then removed all of the electrical tape, to try and find the broken wires. I had found a red snapped wire, and thought that was the issue. I reconnected the two wires with some extra I had laying around, and plugged the connectors back in, but that did not fix the issue, the trunk latch motor would still not move. I pulled out a multimeter, tested the black connector, and I was getting nine volts of power. I then removed the five small screws from the back of the trunk latch, to visually inspect to see if there was anything obviously wrong, but nothing I could see, so onto the next step.
Under the engine next to the battery, there are three fuse box locations.


First, I checked Fuse Box No.1, and looked for fuse number 71, which contains the Trunk Lid Opener Switch.

This fuse was broken, so I replaced it, and still no luck. I then took a look at fuse box No. 2, at the fuse number 50.

This fuse looked fine to me, but I replaced it anyway, just in case.

At this point I was stuck, I had no idea what to do. I went back to the multimeter, and was still getting nine volts of power to the black connector. I then connected the motor with some spare wire to nine volts of running power, and the motor ran, it was working. So I went back to the car to see if there was anything else that I could find. I looked in the glove box, and noticed the trunk on-off switch. I was playing with this button, but still nothing happened. I removed the four screws from the glove box, and pulled the glovebox down, and removed the electrical connector from the back of the glovebox. I then took a piece of wire, and held one end of the wire to the bottom of the on-off switch, and the other end just like the photo below. With the help of my Dad, I held these wires, while he pressed the trunk open button, and just like that, the trunk motor worked perfectly.




Instead of spending $50-$100 on an on-off switch, I just soldered that piece of wire to the on-off connector, so that it would always be on,(Never going to use it, didn't know it existed until today) put the glove box back up, and put everything else back together.
This was my first time writing on a forum, sorry for anything that was not explained well, and I really hope that this helps someone out there. Shoutout to my Dad for helping me out!

 

Thanks for the write-up and pictures, I think this will definitely help others in the future. It’s very satisfying finding the problem and fixing it like you did, nice to see that you were persistent and resourceful. Well done!

 

Thanks so much! That's why I enjoy working on cars, I like to problem solve, and the feeling of that accomplishment is great.

 

Great first post!
And relevant now that our cars are getting older.

There are lots of damn switches for the trunk and no damn trunk key!

My Dad was a dairy farmer and used to fix the cars alone, as I showed no interest. Cherish the time with your Dad and all the things you can learn beyond fixing cars.

 

Editing your post to fix some formatting issue, the text color shows as BLACK on a dark grey background when the page is viewed in dark mode.

Just out of curiosity what text editor did you use to write up the post? It looks like it was copy/pasted from some other application?

 

That's a really odd item to fail too btw, I've never even heard of the trunk valet lockout switch failing in a manner that was causing it to deliver 9vdc. Must have melted on the inside then eventually blew the fuse in the IPDM.

 

Sorry, just for some reason seeing this now, I used google docs to write everything up first, sorry about that.