Wiring harness or short circuit on the 2002 Ford Taurus
Only 6 reports for this mode came with an odometer reading, which is too few for percentiles to mean anything. The page is here because someone linked to it; treat the figures as anecdotes, and see the full report for this year instead.
When wiring harness or short circuit gets reported
There are 7 reports of wiring harness or short circuit on the 2002 Ford Taurus, 6 with a mileage attached. That is too few to place the failure on the odometer with any confidence.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 26th most-reported problem on this model year.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | — | 63,873 miles | — | — |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Putting it right typically runs $400–$3,500 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 8 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2007, at a median of 5 miles, and latest on the 1999 at 110,000 miles.
By volume the 2003 carries the most reports, with 27; the 2002 has 7. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
We purchased a 2002 ford taurus ses new in 2002. The blower motor for heating and air conditioning recently quit working. I took it to the dealership for repair. I was advised that water had shorted out the blower motor causing it to burn up and they had to replace the blower motor, blower resistor and installed a "rainhat extension kit". I was advised that the kit was developed by ford to address the problem of water entering the blower motor and shorting it out. I was billed $374.37 to repair what is obviously a manufacter's defect. I feel that ford should have repaired this defect under an extended warrenty as it is obviously a design defect. The car has been garaged when not it use since it was new. It presently has about 49,500 miles on it.
The blower for the heating and air conditioning stopped working. I removed and replaced the blower motor. The blower motor had shorted out due to water leakage. There was still some water in the motor housing and the metal was rusted, evidence of water penetration for some time. The car is kept in a garage and only has 42,000 miles. I have kept the old part. *nm
My 2002 ford taurus leaks water through the right side of my front windshield and gets water all over my passenger side floor board, sometimes 1/2 an inch deep. The leak has also gotten into my blower fan for my heater/AC and caused it to short out. This makes my car very humid making all of the glass fog up when I am driving to where I cannot see the road. I can't even turn my defroster on because of the blower fan motor that got shorted out from the water leak. I use a rag now to wipe the moisture away with one hand and drive with the other. If it is below freezing, there will actually be a layer of frost on the inside of my front and rear windshields!, which is tough to get all the way off due to the concavity of the glass. I thought that I had just left my window slightly cracked the first few times there was water on my floor board. The first time I noticed the water leaking in was when I had a passenger in my car and the water squirted onto his foot as I was backing down my driveway on a clear day. That means that the water collects somewhere behind the glove box and under the dashboard, after a steady rain, and when the…
Also reported on the 2002 Ford Taurus
Strut, shock or spring failure
Other suspension problem
Blower motor or climate control failure
Other speed control problem
Other body or interior problem
Other visibility problem
How far this goes
This page is kept out of search results because 7 reports is not enough to publish percentiles from. It stays reachable because somebody looking at this exact car would rather see the reports than be told there are none.
Complaints are voluntary, so 7 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does wiring harness or short circuit happen on the 2002 Ford Taurus?
Across 6 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 65,000 miles. A quarter were filed before — and a quarter after —. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is wiring harness or short circuit on the 2002 Ford Taurus?
7 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed