1985-1998 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
It's a real pain of a job but the rewards can be worth it:
Pull all four inner door panels and lubricate the latch mechanisms thoroughly.
If they get frozen up (and they do, from corrosion and lack of lube) the lock motors will be unable to do their jobs and will get really erratic. Won't unlock doors, won't lock doors, buttons popping up late, etc. Inner door buttons also get stiff to move, may break link pivots or pop them out of the door on back doors.
Sounds to me as if your problems may be linked to this, maybe it's all that's wrong.
Door panels are no fun to pull: Driver door you have to use the trick to pull the mirror control switch (Pull tombstone-shaped switch tongue straight off, then in behind it you move a little foam rubber seal and get a tiny screwdriver into a slot, pry the tab (forward? or back??) and switch comes out, rear end first.) Then, door courtesy light lens, one screw; in behind it, a torx screw in a metal tab; pop plastic covers off at either end of door bin and a torx screw at each of those; pop plastic plugs out of arm rest and torx screws down in there; a screw behind mirror control?; at door opening lever, you twist and pull the plastic shield out of there and then there's a screw I think; (or is it in the shield, which you then twist out?); then run window down all the way and pry bottom of inner panel out near either end; there's an upholstery fastener that holds it in. Then with bottom out a bit, pop up HARD on panel's bottom edge with your fist or a mallet, starting at one end. This releases the four stiff spring clips that hold the panel to the sheet metal at top at edge along window glass. Lift it up over the lock knob and unplug any wires to things (trunk switch, say, or on back doors, the door fans; also woops I forgot rear door window switches). Then it's off and you have only goop-attached plastic weather shield between you and the innards.
Might get by with nozzle-guided spray lubes and not disassembly. I waded right in and took the entire latch works out, on rear doors. Look for my old posts on the topic for more.
The stiff latches make the relays in the central locking control box work extra hard and this can have ruined them. Some people say they've had good luck re-soldering those relays to their board; I got a new control box from an early '94, fit my 96 but had slightly beefier relays.
posted by 72.73.9...
, Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:27:03
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