Driver's Door Locked - Please Help ?

[macspring]

My driver's door seems to have got itself out of sync with the rest of the doors today. While rushing I may have tried to open the door just as the remote was opening the doors via the central locking.

Currently the drivers door is locked and while one can pull up the knob, or open the lock via the key, or "unlock" it via the remote central locking, in each instance the driver's door knob comes up and then goes down a fraction, the door itself is still locked.

i.e. the door itself is dead-locked regardless of whether the door knob is up or down. I disconnected the battery and re-connected after tea this evening and all that changed was that the radio memory was lost.

I haven't tried pulling out the fuse for the central locking to see if that makes any difference?

I read Brooksy's similar problem where he also had an Avant and got around it by hacksawing off the striker pin off to get the door open. I've pm'd him as the thread never mentioned what the cause of the original problem was.

I wanted to avoid this course of action until the bitter end.

Has anyone any suggestions as to the cause/cure, as getting in an out the passenger door is not the greatest!

My gut feeling is that it electrical rather than mechanical ?

Thank you and kind regards.

[S2central.net]

I've had one of my door locks freeze like that a couple of times. It is caused by someone pulling the handle as the lock mechanism is opening. My wee fella has done it twice. In both cases I've simply locked it again with remote, waited a couple of seconds, unlocked it and its been OK. I know that doesn't help you, but I think its some mechanical part that locks up.

Have you tried opening it with the key ?

Sounds like you need to get the door trim off for a look at whats amiss.

[Fat Audi 80]

Can you open it from the inside? I would expect the lock to "reset" itself if you pull the lever on the inside....



I suspect you have already done this, but let's start at the beginning!

Cheers,

Steve.

[Ian Simmonds]

Ours does very similar to yours Paul, triggered by over eager little fingers pulling the catch as the system is still unlocking... And we do the same, relock and unlock.

Years ago, a mate had a type 89 20v Coupe quattro, that did similar but wouldn't respond to the above. Freed it up by lifting the plunger and (at the same time) gently (and I mean gently) opening the door from the inside handle... Don't force it, you'll just break the lever rod and plastic clips in the door.

[stiglet]

Taking the door trim of is gonna be hard as there is one screw which sits on the end of the door, needs to be open to get to it.

Mine has done the same as above many times but again just locked/unlocked/played with plunger and problem sorted.

Except once it completely froze, i just hit the door hard (with frustration!) from the inside and that unjammed it. Use that as a last resort i think!

[S2central.net]

Ahh - the old percussive maintenance technique

[stiglet]

Ahh - the old percussive maintenance technique

Most of the time it just makes thing worse though, which makes me even more irritated so i hit it harder..... and so the cycle continues until i have hammer in hand......

If you do manage to fix it please let us know how you did it, as i'm sure this will happen to me again sometime and i might not be so lucky.

[Zeus]

I have a similar problem on my S2 coupe, I can't get the drivers side door open since this morning. I think the door mechanism got frozen and when i tried to unlock the car this morning it broke...

So I can only get the boot and the passenger side door open.

I've tried the inside doorhandle and the outside doorhandle, but it seems they aren't connected to the locking mechanism anymore....
And I cant remove the door card because there's a little scew in the side of the panel that I can't reach when the door is closed...

Does anybody know how I can get the door open????

Help please, I use the car as my daily driver....
It's kind of ridiclous having to enter the car through the passenger side

[Zeus]

Ahh - the old percussive maintenance technique

I've just made an attempt at this so called "percussive maintenance" but I was not succesfull...

[Acidburn]

Can't you pull up the pin for the door on the top section of the doorcard then try the handles?

I'd have thought once you un-done the central locking then the handles will work?

[Zeus]

Can't you pull up the pin for the door on the top section of the doorcard then try the handles?

I'd have thought once you un-done the central locking then the handles will work?

The whole central locking system works fine, my problem is that the whole system on the drivers side with doorhandles and the pin you are discribing isn't connected to the actual lock on the drivers side anymore....

I've already tried opening and locking several times, and the pin comes up and everything, but the door won't unlock because some linkage is broken inside the door

[macspring]

What I had to do was,

strip off the the trim on the A pillar of the Avant to expose the screw at the top back end of the door car, this then allows one to pull the door card up and out just enough at the rear to try and get your hand in to trigger the door lock manually. It is hard to describe and even harder to do without wrecking the door card.

To help yourself I would suggest taking out the seat, not easy when it has to be taken out of the car via the opposite-side door. The other thing you'll need to do when you are attempting to get you hand into the lock, is rip out of the way the white plastic anti-theft cover Audi put in place to cover the lock to stop thieves attempting to trigger the lock from outside the car using a slim tool down the side of the door's window.

The problem you have is annoying and will end up scraping and bruising your forearm. If you can get a spare door card in advance it will make your job easier.

If you can go to a breakers yard and take apart a front door to see how it works as this will give you a better appreciation of what you are up against / need to do. Take photos for your own reference of the interior of the door in the breakers yard as you will not remember all or enough of the details when you are doing your own door.

HTH somewhat, and good luck.

Kind regards.

[Phil Payne]

MityVac on the line from the pump.

[karlblues2]

Guys
I have the opposite problem. My passenger door won't lock. The other door and the boot lock and unlock fine, but not the passenger door. I only use the key to operate as my remote died years ago. Is there a central locking pump or an actuator that fails??
Cheers in advance
Karl
Oz
(Can't park anywhere with it as is either!)

[Greg_S]

Karl, Paul has a few bits on this on S2central. There is a vacuum pump, from memory on left in front footwell, have you checked fuses and are the other doors ok?