Fix Central Locking
This article can become your guide into how to fix this problem.
Steps
- Choose the door that contains the alarm. In order to avoid disassembling the entire door panel at all (you might break the hooks) begin with the door that breaks the alarm. Get into the car and close all the doors.
- At this point, if you have the remote for central locking, close the system by pressing the button with the lock icon and try to open it by lifting one of the two rungs on the doors; the peg on the door that does not open up when all other doors are opening is the one you have to fix.
- For those who do not have the remote control, close the doors by pressing the close pin/button which is located on the driver side.
- From this method, you should be able to locate the source of the central locking problem.
- Proceed to removing the panel door. Remove the motor on the outer side of the door and detach it from power cable and the closure system. To do this, disconnect the two connectors, and after unscrewing the screws that hold the motor fixed to the frame, rotate until the locking pin slips. Pay close attention to the connectors because they are very delicate and are on a circuit electronic board!
- Give the motor some attention. Unscrew the top part of the connector, then with a couple of screwdrivers, remove the white cover. Be careful because under the cover there is a small sphere that houses the pin motor. Then, lift the lid carefully.
- Pull the motor with the help of tweezers (the motor is the device with a firm plastic at its beginning, which goes up and down the post closure). Be careful here because the actuator (i.e the rotating part of the motor) there is a small ball that you have to position at the center when reassembling the whole system.
- Look for the worn lead contacts. Once you have extracted the motor with its tab you will notice that there a long trail that looks like a potentiometer, and is pretty much the one that allows it to close or open the door, and is the origin of the problem. In fact, after it has been cleaned, especially at the reactivating contacts, you will notice that at the end of the runway welding it has 2 points with the lead-contacts worn off, which was caused by the normal use of the central locking.
- Take a soldering iron and solder the remake at that point (if you want you can also redo the whole run). Once you have finished welding, polish the contacts with a very fine sandpaper, ensuring it's polished evenly, and reassemble everything.
- Try to close the doors and you will see that now raising the peg or simply turning the key for the door that had central locking problem now works fine. If you want, then you can clean it with a spray to prevent a recurrence of the problem.
Tips
- To clean the contact leads effectively,use every engineer's best friend, WD-40, a product with penetrating spray, corrosion inhibitors, and lubricants that will help you tackle all of the hard jobs involving moving parts, and is safe for use.
Warnings
- Ensure the car is off when doing the repair works.
- If the central locking system differs from the above description, or the car is new, you may have to perform some operations to interface with the remote control system- the instructions for that would normally be found in the instruction booklet.
