Club 80-90 Forums

hey up fellow campers my central locking was working fine and then today went to open on the passengers side and it just opened that door??... then went over to the drivers side and it opened all the doors, seems like its only the drivers side thats working and the side door and passenger door only works when you unlock it manually.. has anyone experienced this problem before? is it easy to fix? can i do it myself , thanks for you help folks, happy new year Jo

There are lots of posts on here about this.

Each door has a acuator, or solonoid below the pop up button, this contains a sliding contact mounted on springs, these rust and the contact fails to bridge the copper strips.
Sometimes twater gets in the acuators which stops them working too.

Strip the unit from the door in question and have a look.

T

it could well be something to do with this freezing weather.icing things up...

tonytech wrote:There are lots of posts on here about this.

Sometimes twater gets in the acuators which stops them working too.

T

Who' s the twater Hope he doesn't fiddle with my actuator

thanks tonytech for your helpful info, you might aswell av been talking to me in chinese though!! for me to understand what you wrote haha... lol ... aint got a clue, plus im just a dumb female! haha... as for stripping the door?? haha.. sounds like a trip to my local mechanic with a very low revealing top might be in store! hehe... anything for a freebie... cheers mate

Fully Loaded Cali' wrote:
Who' s the twater Hope he doesn't fiddle with my actuator

Twater...... Northern expression for rain....
Ask t'onion.

There is not much to removing the central locking bits from the doors.
You need to remove the door cards.... held on by push clips. A large bladed screwdriver slid in and twisted does the job.
You may need to remove the door pull handle too.

The Acuator or solonoid lives just below the locking button. Two screws a cable conector and then twist to release the thick wire to the locking button.

Then it gets tricky taking the unit apart, but nothing to be scared of.
but drying it out may help.

T

After buy my Van, I ripped open the door panels out of curiosity and to my supprise found 2 disconnected central locking units.

I connected them up, but they still didnt work. I disconnected again, just incase this was done for a reason (draining battery).

If they are original units, do they work off the ECU? Normally an alarm system is always installed in tandom with central locking units as something has to control them.

so if I want to test them, I can put them across my battery? Could someone please describe how to test these the "safest" way

Standard CL just locks all doors (inc tailgate and slider) when either of the front doors are locked.
Or unlocks as above.

There is no connection to the ECU, though someone may have interfaced it to an alarm.

Probably the springs on the sliding contacts as described above are shot.
Connect both front door lock motors and try locking and unlocking them.
Leave the slider open (If your lock motors go wrong they can force your door locks to lock even against the turn of a key)

T

having looked in the sliding door there was a cable which was tapped off, but no motor

the boot door has been replaced, looks like at short notice, as the replacement has no wiper or heated window and the cables have simply been cut.

do these open cables effect the central locking, as mentioned, I did connect both front door motors up with no joy?

havent checked fusebox yet

My T25 doesn't have that level of sophistication but my Mondeo does and it did just what you described. My solution was to use the new spare key I had cut (Good hint for any one key only pepes) and keep the original for emergency. As it happens the Mondeo central lock facility does freeze up at the drivers door and in a hard frost will sometimes require a kettle of boiling water poured down the panel junction to free it. I guess it is a bit worn.
Cheers
Wolfie

hi, finally got round to looking at the cental locking motors. As mentioned before there are only 2 for the front door as sliding door and boot door are missing.

1 of the motors was rusted up but after a clean/oil its now working again.

My problem now is that the cable for the motor on the driver side does not work, the live is not live. On the passenger side the live is live and I can connect both motors here and they work.

Its quite hard to see where the live wire originates as once it comes out behind the fuse box, its like trying to find 1 specific needle in a stack of needles. ALL of my fuses are intact in the fuse box.

Is the fuse for the central locking in a different location, is there a fuse for each side also, which would explain why only the 1 side is not live.

ok, ive seen from other threads that

fuse 52 will be clipped onto top of fuseboard as are any additional relays eg headlight washers, heaters etc.....it's wired red in and out, one side is fed by a plug on the back of the fuseboard other side goes to front motors, probably 10 amp

but here is a pic of my fuse box, which is it then?

Ok, as nobody wanted to point out which cable it was from the spaghetti junction above I was able to find the cable connector for the door behind the fuse box and that was live too. So was able to get the whole door cable loom out and 'specially have a look at the cables in the door well and found 3 cables broke (Red and Brown for locking and also red and black for the electric windows)

So now have central locking, on the front doors that is, as previous owner/s as well as removing the lecky windows (but all the cables still there), also removed the sliding door central locking motor for some reason. So need to get my hands on another 2 (for boot door too) then.

So need to get my hands on another 2 (for boot door too) then.[/quote]
you can get them from rightclick i think they are £4.50

But the ones on rightclick are either 2 or 5 wires. The VAG ones on the bus also have 5,

Brown - ground
Black - negative
red - live
white and yellow - communication to each other, to report if locked or open.

so maybe it will work.

They actually communicate with each other, without any central processing, old skool.

Will wait and pick up some originals from somewhere anyway.