Door Lock Woes pt. 2

[nirvana19]

Months and months ago in Door Lock Woes pt. 1 my rear door lock actuator was frozen (in the locked position) requiring the strenuous tearing apart of that door to open it again and pull out the fault actuator.

That actuator was removed and that door remained manually unlocking until just two days ago when I installed a brand new rear door lock actuator. Well, that works fine, but I just realized that now my front passenger door isn't locking!

You can't even push it down, when I lock and unlock the doors it feels like the actuator inside the door is trying to do something (though its hard to tell if what i'm hearing/feeling is the rear or front actuator), though the knob doesn't move at all.

Anyone have an idea, or do I just have really bad luck and another frozen actuator (the first one seemed to freeze because the rubber boot was torn letting in moisture, but I checked all the others and the boots were all intact and seemed fine on the others)? I played around with the locks to no avail

[nirvana19]

Okay so after a brief fit of cursing I pulled off my door panel and pulled out the actuator (<5 minutes) and found that the actuator works perfectly fine as suspected, however the door lock for whatever reason doesn't.. lock. Probably weather related like my trunk, I'm going to spray some WD40 on there and hope things start working again but, if not, any advice on the locks? Doesn't look tough to replace and the one in there looks to be in crappy condition, anyone got a spare that I could buy, I have no idea how much they go for.

[Ferret]

If it's wedged - try to push the lock up and down while lifting the door handle up and down rapidly.

If this doesnt work try the emergency lock/unlock proceedure and see if this does it.

[nirvana19]

If it's wedged - try to push the lock up and down while lifting the door handle up and down rapidly.

If this doesnt work try the emergency lock/unlock proceedure and see if this does it.

Just gave that a try for a couple minutes, didn't quite do the trick. Still won't move into the locked position, looks like some moisture has gotten in there and theres some corrosion like the trunk lock (sometimes won't open, but a bit of WD40 in the key hole always opens it up). If what I'm saying makes any sense at all, on what part of the lock should I be spraying WD40 (or is this a bad idea so close electronics). What does the lock being "wedged" mean?

[nirvana19]

well this morning, still stuck, sprayed more WD40, I guess I'll have to pull the lock if it doesn't release by then. What components are likely to get stuck/freeze?

[nirvana19]

UPDATE: For months I've been manually locking and unlocking my front passenger door (started working randomly) and had the actuator disconnected. Today I got some unrelated replacement parts for that door, and planned on reconnecting the actuator since it seemed to be working, but after connecting the actuator I couldn't lock again. Figuring the lock/latch was bad, I pulled it only to find that its actually a fairly simple assembly that appears to be functioning flawlessly.

After I disconnected the linkage from what seems to connect to the door lock and indirectly the actuator, I had no problem locking the door manually. NOW heres whats weird, that door lock has always been different from the others. The travel of the locking pin (the one that protrudes from the door) has always been less than all the other doors in the car. When unlocked, the pin was always significantly lower than the other doors. When locked, the pin was slightly lower than the others but not as much. Because of this, I figured the lock was defective, but upon inspection there is clearly nothing broken there. I can't think of any variable that would lead to the different in pin travel as the lock mounting position does not vary inside the door (and I have now mounted it WITHOUT connecting the internal linkage which I guess is related to the emergency unlock) On realoem, I noticed that the locking mechanism part only ran to 11/88, does anyone know what changed after 11/88. I'm suspecting that this might simply be a different lock from the others hence the linkages and all being different and causing problems. Else, the problem would have to be the solenoid-like thing connected to the lock cylinder for emergency unlock, but that would still not explain the pin travel.

Sorry that this post is so lengthy but this is difficult to describe, i'll try to get pictures to illustrate what I'm saying.