sliding door rear catch problem

[BLUG]

the rear catch on my sliding door has come loose and wont tighten up,i reckon that the captive nut inside the door has broken away,the problem is that they look almost impossible to get to without cutting the door up and re welding it back.
anyone know of any fixes/cheats?

[1664]

Misunderstood you there for a minute so deleted my previous post. The only 'cheat' I can think of is either attaching a nut to one of those extendable magnet gizmo's (look like a round magnet attached to a car aerial) or possibly sticking nut to a long screwdriver with the likes of bluetak. You could drill a 20/25mm hole in the outer skin by the mechanism and hold the nut with some long nose pliers and then put a blind rubber grommet in the hole.

[CovKid]

Failing that, use one of these - available from your VW dealer

[T-3PO]

the rear catch on my sliding door has come loose and wont tighten up,i reckon that the captive nut inside the door has broken away,the problem is that they look almost impossible to get to without cutting the door up and re welding it back.
anyone know of any fixes/cheats?

Hey welcome to my club! No offence but I'm glad to hear it's happened to someone else as well and not just me! Needs a bit of reverse engineering but this is the way I fixed mine ....

Remove the inner panel and unbolt the middle runner/hinge so you swing the door out and the rest it on stable blocks as you'll need a bit of access.
Find a suitable size bolt (and nut) to go through the existing hole it'll need to be fairly long and also have a large flat head about the size of a 1p so it won't pull through ... rare to find so you could try a standard bolt with a washer glued* to it.
Get yourself a flexible pick up tool , a magnet just doesn't cut it I'm afraid and grab the bolt by the head and feed it into the door panel aiming to get the thread thru the hole so it sticks out of the catch. *reason for glueing the washer on so it doesn't fall off! You can have a bit sticking out of the catch but too much and you won't be able to close the door.
Remove the bolt, if neccesary cut it down, then cut a slot into the threaded end wide enough to take a screw driver but not so wide it makes the threaded part too thin and flimsy.
Re-feed the bolt back in, put on a squirt of threadlock and gently put the nut on, remove the pick up tool and using a screwdriver and the slot you cut tighten the nut/bolt. I was lucky the the sides of the nut started to grip the catch and a spanner wasn't need for very long.

You'll need to use thread lock and make sure it's all tight, my first attempt didn't and I hadn't made the cut in the bolt either so after a few months it fell apart ... this version is still holding together now (touch wood!) Might be worth shoving some rags along the bottom of the indside of door as you WILL drop the bolt a few times before you get it right!

Good luck, for the life of me I couldn't think of anything easier, there's no way to get into where the captive nuts are to weld new ones on ... unless you wanna remove the door skin!! And there's no way to get a spanner on to a nut from in side the door panel either!

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