In my continuing saga with my door lock and fuel door actuators, I have finally opened the rear pax door which was stuck in double lock.

I was dreading this quite a bit and set aside most of a Saturday to get this opened. Luck must have been shining on me (or the car) and it turned out a non event.

Here is what I did:


First of all, pull as much of the rubber door trim out as you can, especially around the area of the trim panel. For me, I only needed to pull it out from the center frame.

Lower the window all the way, remove the wood trim, the the 8mm screws left and right of the door handle and unscrew the plastic pull knob. Then carefully pry out the top of the door panel from under the chrome trim.


Next carefully pull the door panel off starting at the upper corner at the hinge side of the door. slowly open the gap up



open the gap till you can get your hand through the hole marked with the red arrow. VERY IMPORTANT, unless you have a bottomless supply of 6mm wrenches tie a string on to your wrench, I found this tip on Johan's website I believe, I dropped mine a few times and was saved by the string.! I left the window down as it acted as a mirror and with a strategically placed light I could see the reflection of the screws in the lowered window.



The door activator sits in slots, I was lucky in that when I loosened both screws a little I could push the actuator towards the door lock, lo and behold, I could unlock the car door. I opened the the car door, closed the window and removed the whole door panel.



time for the Post Mortem. I measured on the contacts to see what resistance I would get. On the good actuator i got about 5 ohms and 23 ohms, on the defective actuator it was more like 5 ohms and 300 ohms.



So, out came the exacto knife again and I cut off the top of the door actuator. The red arrow points to the double lock feature. It is clearly in the locked position.



It appears to be a single lever, and more interestingly, the motor driving it only makes about half a turn or so!! I spun the motor by hand a few times, measured the resistance, right back to around 25 ohms. Just to be sure, I connected the motor to a 9 Volt battery and let it spin for a few minutes. I would suspect that the commutator always rubbed the same small area and that got dirty. The two motors have different sizes.



pieced it all back together and it appears to be functional again, I guess I'll glue the top back on and use it as a spare.

As another though: maybe I will drill a small hole in the housing, that would allow me to insert a pin and push the lock lever back out....yeah, I'd be THAT lucky ;-)

Hope ya'all have some use from my experience here

Gert

750IL 1990 (9/89) Black, 75K,


750IL 1989 (9/88) Black, 155K


I told my wife, it is not a Boy Toy, is a Man's Machine!!

• Rear door actuator replacement (pic) - rv8flyboy 2008-05-10 16:30:06 (129 views)
  • R.H.D.[Aust] 10/87 E32 735i sedan. - obclap 2008-05-28 04:11:37 (27 views)