Kharon

I can already guess why the door isn't opening: Central lock motor broke and left the door deadlocked. Why? My car did exactly that 2 years ago. Lot of curse words were needed to get the lock into pieces and door open. Obviously you can't remove even the central lock when the door is closed: It's all one clump of plastic. Stupid design IMHO.

Here in North it's cold and damp and A/C doesn't do anything if automation decides it's cool enough inside. Fine by itself, but at this time of the year just drying the incoming air would help a lot and as far as I knew 10 minutes ago, there's no way to force A/C on and what follows is fogged windows, all of them. I just noticed from another post that putting automation into recycle -position, would force the A/C on at the same time. Manual doesn't say anything about that, can anyone confirm? It's raining sleet outside, I' m not going out just to test it right now. The rant: WTF were they thinking at factory when they decided that one(!) vent in the middle of the dash would be enough? It leaves large areas at lower corners of windshield semi-permanently fogged as there's no air flow to there and adding fan speed doesn't help at all, only noise increases. I've seen some comments that removing interior air filter would help, but it's not really easily accessible, so I haven't tried that yet.

Late answer but perhaps it's still useful. 1.8T is relatively reliable engine, mine has 215k miles now and list of faults for the 50k miles I've owned it, is relatively short. - broken thermostat, the reason PO was selling it, it didn't warm up. Nasty, nasty place, so a PITA to change. - intake leak in one of the hoses (shop replaced it while replacing cam belt, no idea which one it was) - coolant leak from distribution block o-ring at right side of the engine. Probably my own fault as the o-ring didn't like oil at all and valve cover was leaking, directly above it. ~2h job to replace the valve cover seal and no special tools required. And, as maintenance: Cam belt, rollers and water pump changed in shop as i had no documentation of previous change and PO didn't remember. That wasnt' cheap, about 800 euros. I'm using normal (semi-synthetic) 0W40 in winter and 10W40 in summer and replace it every 6k miles or so as oil is cheap insurance against engine failure. "Long life" oil does not mean long life for the engine. Other stuff: - Both lock cylinders dead as a dodo as PO used only remote: Couldn't even insert a key, so I bought new ones. - Driver door window lift cable rusted so badly it broke(!). New one wasn't expensive though. - Driver door and rear hatch lock microswitches sometimes work, sometimes don't. - Rear driver side door central lock broke, leaving the door deadlocked. Absolute bonkers idea. I had to rip door panel by force and literally cut the lock mechanism into pieces just to get the door open. - Rear hatch central lock does the same sometimes, but at least you can remove it with 2 screws and operate the lock manually. -

I have this problem: I open the locks, open rear hatch (estate model) and pack some stuff in, car re-locks. I always thought it's normal as it doesn't do that if I open any other door. So I have a faulty microswitch. No surprise, trunk lights are on or off really randomly. Mostly off, but they might turn on while driving despite hatch being closed. Bulbs out is the current kludge, but obviously it's time to replace the microswitch.

Can confirm, that's the spot. In my case central locking wiring from driver side back door: Everything was looking good, but copper threads within the plastic sleeve were cut. 10" piece of new wire and two joints later lock was working again as I didn't want to make a joint at the same spot, it wouldn't last.

Not very pretty solderings but you get the idea: http://kharon.suomiforum.com/www/ocu/PA252599.JPG http://kharon.suomiforum.com/www/ocu/PA252600.JPG Unfortunately no significant improvement in range (still few meters), but reliability improved a bit, I don't have to press buttons several times to open/close the doors.

OK, didn't hand anything more urgent on hand so I took some pics. Contacts on battery side Circuit board on the other side. As you can see the contact surface is very, very thin and the copper layer has already significant deformation/wear at contact points: It should be straight and now it has 2 notches, meaning it's not going to get proper contact no matter what. Unfortunately the circuit board is not meant to be removed, so I'll first to add some material (solder) to the edge of the copper pad. More pics to follow it I succeed.

Unfortunately it's a contact problem within key fob itself: The battery is in the other half and the the rest is in the other half and there's only a very thin layer of copper on top of the circuit board while the connecting pieces are leaning to the edge of the circuit board. No copper on the edge, only on top, so the connection area isn't any thicker than the copper pad on the circuit board, some hundreds of a millimeter.Also, the connecting piece is pushing this very thin copper layer inwards at every battery change so it eventually loses contact. It's obvious that that kind of connection won't last long, planned breaking point. You could try to fix it by soldering some tin to the said copper piece but not easy as it has to be very thin layer. I've second key I'll try to fix this way, pics will follow later today. Pics show the problem area in any case.

Not even that: The motor itself *is not broken*. Also it's a quality product made by Mabuchi Motors so if you have this problem, it's most probably isn't the motor itself, but contact strips to the motor. 2p fault, buy a new lock. Unfortunately I had to break whole lock to get door open, but it would have been totally fixable while it was intermittent. Saving a price of a new lock. Blah. 80e from FLAPs, cheapest ones from the net about 30 euros + freight + a week or so. Parts store got it for next day, can't complain too much. Metzger Autoteile says the box.

Happened to me: Driver side rear door motor intermittent since early summer. I should have removed the lock then and converted it into manual use (not hard when it's on the table). As a lazy guy I didn't and it gave up finally in late July. I had done some preparation, i.e. removal of screws from door panel, so removing it while door was closed, wasn't too hard. But getting the door open took hammer, chisel, big pliers, side cutters, lot of curse words and 2 hours, eventually removing all the plastic parts on top of the metal parts. Got it open, removed the lock and noticed that I cant use it as manual lock as one of the pieces actually pressing the latch release got lost somewhere while hammering. Ouch. So no other options than buy a new lock Fortunately those aren't expensive. I did at some early point see that gear (step 12) but I managed to turn it from end to other and and no change; Still deadlocked so I used brute force. It works in this case.

Still useful topic, thanks to Bowders1! Had to replace window lifter as one of the cables broke and glass dropped to halfway, so I tackled stuck lock at the same time: It was so badly rusted even key wouldn't go in and the lock cylinder was totally stuck. I had to eventually drill the lock cylinder out and buy a new one. Anyway, now the the window and the lock cylinder operate as intended. While there I cleaned and checked the microswitch, seems to be OK.