Door lock mechanism

[sb01box]

Originally Posted by chaudanova

Had the same problem a while ago... Most likely culprit is that your door lock microswitch (of of few) is toast... I'd suspect the microswitch that is in the door latch... That's the one that did the trick for me..

I took the mechanism apart and found cold solder joint between the printed wiring board and the connector. Reflow solder and it's back to normal. Mind you that my unit behaved erratically when the harness/connector was wiggled.

If you encounter similar situation, you may want to open the unit up and see. an hour of labor saved me $$$
here's a photo of the printed wiring board

[Jinster]

sb01box, before you fixed it, did you have problem with the door unlocking itself?

I too have the "wiggle the harness" problem - my windows would go up and down with it. I didn't open DLM up. I just secured the harness with lots of cable ties. This has fixed the erratic window not dropping problem.

But my door automatic unlocking problem remains. I don't have alarm/remote.

I can't lock the passenger side door from the driver side.

The driver door would automatically unlock if I try to lock it.

[sparker]

I had the 'wiggle-the-harness' lock issue, appears it was just a matter of re-routing the wires to the lock mechanism. They were squashed between the door frame and that metal bracket that is bolted in by the three or four 10mm bolts. As soon as I un-squashed them and put them in a more sensible path, the problem seems to have gone!

Will keep the solder joint issue in mind though. Makes me laugh how so many of us are going through exactly the same strange problem though!
Sam

[Jinster]

Ok, my door auto unlocking is in fact due to broken wires on the passenger door side - detailed in my other thread.

Back to the driver side "wiggle" DLM socket/plug phenomenon, my cable tie solution started to fail after a few weeks. So I decided to do what sb01box did - open the DLM and re-solder those joints.

But I got lucky.

Instead of opening the DLM, I tried heating those joints by applying the soldering iron to the pins through the socket on the DLM. All the while having faith that the solder on the joints would melt and re-solidify without me seeing any of it happening.

And it worked! No more window problem and "wiggle DLM socket to fix" phenomenon!

Of course, anyone with some soldering experience knows that you don't need to apply the iron directly to the solder joint to melt it. The challenge (and luck) here is to make sure when the solder re-solidifies, it holds the pin to the circuit board rather than forming a ball on the pin and comes off the circuit board completely.

Credit goes to sb01box who thought of opening the DLM to re-solder everything in the first place. That was my intention today until I got lucky.

[seningen]

Originally Posted by sb01box

I took the mechanism apart and found cold solder joint between the printed wiring board and the connector. Reflow solder and it's back to normal. Mind you that my unit behaved erratically when the harness/connector was wiggled.

If you encounter similar situation, you may want to open the unit up and see. an hour of labor saved me $$$
here's a photo of the printed wiring board

Where do you find this -- is this inside the door panel?

thanks,

mike

[sb01box]

seningen,
The pwb is in the door lock mechanism. The harness connector attaches to a mating connector that is soldered to the PWB.
I was going to buy a new mechanism, so decided to take it apart. For my car, this was the root cause.
If you plan to take it apart, be aware of jigsaw puzzle-like assembly of the door mechanism.
I think the original message has some photos and here's one of the broken solder joint