Driver's Side Door Won't Unlock!

Everything was fine with the car until this evening. I had backed the car out of the garage and we moved it a couple of time unlocking and locking the doors. ll of the sudden, the driver's side door won't unlock. I crawled in through the passenger side to see if I could fix it. My door panel has magnets instead of fir trees so I easily removed that to take a look in there. The rods to open the doors seem to be working fine. When I press the rocker button to unlock the door I can see the upper rear rod move but the rocker does not stay down in the unlock position. What do I do to get this fixed?

Does it do the same with the door lock ECU unplugged? If not then the door switch may need adjustment.

This is always my worst nightmare as I am very OTT conscious about the lack of climbing out of the windows should both doors not open.

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Originally Posted by Bitsyncmaster

Does it do the same with the door lock ECU unplugged? If not then the door switch may need adjustment.

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I disconnected the battery and tried opening the door but nothing. It feels like the rear of the door wants to open but not the front.

You try unlocking the door while manually grabbing and moving the rods inside. Once you get it open you check the door anchor pins and then do the internal door adjustment procedure. This always happens because one door was NOT in 2nd locking position and it was forced into the locked position. A properly adjusted door will NOT allow you to lock it unless BOTH latches are in 2nd locking position. Forcing the door to lock bends the rods.

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Originally Posted by David T

You try unlocking the door while manually grabbing and moving the rods inside. Once you get it open you check the door anchor pins and then do the internal door adjustment procedure. This always happens because one door was NOT in 2nd locking position and it was forced into the locked position. A properly adjusted door will NOT allow you to lock it unless BOTH latches are in 2nd locking position. Forcing the door to lock bends the rods.

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I think you are right. I was able to get the door open with some help from DMC (Thanks!). I closed the door and it locked again. Looks like I'll be digging into the door.

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Originally Posted by lazabby

I think you are right. I was able to get the door open with some help from DMC (Thanks!). I closed the door and it locked again. Looks like I'll be digging into the door.

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It’s not uncommon, and it’s usually the front latch. Some of us get around this by not locking the doors, or removing the front latch lock-rod. The “wedgectomy” can help too.

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Originally Posted by er1c

This is always my worst nightmare as I am very OTT conscious about the lack of climbing out of the windows should both doors not open.

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That is an extremely rare scenario. And you could very easily climb out the side window. The channel for the tollbooth window is not very strong. It wouldn’t take much to break both pieces of glass (or 1 if the window can roll down) and the channel, creating a “normal” size hole to climb out of. Since most latch problems seem to occur from locking, you could greatly increase your chances by not using the locks.