I've been working to figure out why my passenger door lock is intermittently jamming. It will open a hundred times from the inside and outside, unlocked. Locked, it will open from the inside, no problem. But from the outside, it will open once, locked and then when the door is closed, it will not open from either the inside or the outside. The lock mechanism will not rotate to the 'Unlock' position. The Lock Bar has limited travel all of a sudden. Why? I figured out why.

I've been working on it for three nights, taking lots of pictures and then trying to figure out, exactly how it works, so that I can apply a solution (which should be tonight). Let us begin:





Backside View





Frontside View





Pawl Release (close up)




Lock Release Indicator




Lock Bar Jam

I will get more pics. But here's what's happening. The thing works PERFECTLY out of the door and then does the Jamming thing, installed and ONLY with the OUTER DOOR HANDLE. So, I played with it, outside of the car and both INNER and OUTER Door Actuators, moved the Vertical Release Bar upwards, with the same range of motion. What I think is happening, is that the bell crank that the OUTER DOOR ROD connects to, has a TAB, that is contacted by the OUTER DOOR HANDLE itself and I noticed that the OUTER DOOR HANDLE doesn't even start to PUSH that bell crank (in red) until it's halfway down! And then it bottoms out in the recess completely. I watched it, as I pushed it down and I got motion on the Vertical Release Bar (that releases the Pawl, that releases the Latch), BUT NOT ENOUGH to complete the pawl release! So I am going to remove the OUTER DOOR HANDLE and bend that tab upwards, so that it may get the 'push' from the door handle SOONER and begin the pawl release sequence. I also have to make sure it's adjusted on the threaded rod, so that it goes DOWN enough to not jam the LOCK BAR either. I will tell you guys, later on, how it went.

 

Door Latch installed

 

Bottom View