Moving the central locking fuse

[Kibokojoe]

My sons 7 has a problem with the door lock actuators freezing in cold conditions and they will not unlock until it warms up. Once it warmed up a temporary fix was to remove the 7.5 amp (brown) fuse. I found this under the rear seat. I have now decided to move this fuse to the trunk. The trunk always opens even when the battery is dead. Between removing the fuse and having access to the trunk light for the (red/white) wire, dead battery jump, I should be able to get into the car no matter what. Anyone else ever try this? Wish these actuators were a later style, it appears you can take those apart and clean them. I am sure it is just old grease that is causing them to stick. And yes I have removed the door locks and cleaned them. I did this with my 5 and have not had a problem since.

[genphreak]

Hmm. Which fuse? Why remove it? Then what? (Just confiused 'sall...)

Those theories on the jamming locks sound like gold. I thought they were well sealed though- inc the later ones. Must take a closer look sometime! (am living with a sticky rear door lock on an 10/88 and 5/95 car presently)

[Kibokojoe]

Wish there was a way to replace those crappy actuators.

[Kibokojoe]

There is a brown fuse under the back seat that controls the central locking. When you remove it, you can then lock and unlock the doors without the actuators. With the fuse removed locking is easy, but you have to use the secret unlocking technique that everyone talks about :) ....you know the one where you have to hold up on the handle while turning the key. With the fuse in place when you try to unlock the car and its cold outside the actuator just tries to lock itself again. What a crap design. Also with the fuse removed you can pull up on the door lock knobs inside the car manually. You have to lock and unlock each door manually but at least you can lock up the car. Most of the time we are in our cars by ourselves but when you get several people riding it get to be a pain. I am really thinking if you can control this fuse and boost the battery from the truck this should take care of a lot of locking problems with this car. Oh by the way I think it is fuse 30 or 31 but can not find a diagram anywhere that shows the fuse orientation under the back seat. Does anyone have the diagram? When the weather gets better I am going to tackle this project and take pics.

[DueyT]

Wish there was a way to replace those crappy actuators.

You can. I just replaced my front passenger actuator. You need a mirror to get everything to line up, but it's not overly difficult. :)

[Kibokojoe]

I was talking about replacing the bmw actuator with something more reliable

[dennyg]

I now have to 1989 cars and can confirm this problem is more frequent on the 89 yr cars.

Both my siver and now red car have the same issue. Front driver door will not work but the other three work fine. Nice solution. I would rather use the emergency unlock method then reach around from the rear door to open up the driver door.

[Kibokojoe]

Have you noticed that with the fuse in place you cannot pull up on the door lock knobs. But with the fuse out no problem. The actuator must have current sent to it constantly when it is locked to prevent anyone from lifting the door lock knobs. Can you say overkill. The crazy thing is if the battery goes dead with the doors locked you can't lift the door lock knobs either. What were these engineers thinking. Hinse the two fold approach to solving this problem. One is to have the ability to remove the fuse when the battery is good. And second to have the ability to boost the battery if it has gone dead. I have found that the trunk is accessable whether or not you have power or the fuse is removed. All kinds of little hiding places in the trunk :) I am thinking about attaching a 5 amp 12v dc transformer to the battery and running it into the trunk. I am going to disconnect the battery and give it a trial run tonight and see if it will give enough power to unlock the doors. Should work.