JamezF

Well, I gambled on a used controller unit from Ebay for a whole seventeen of your Earth pounds. Without fitting it I just swapped the wiring over and the indicator repeater started to work once again. Quite possibly that means the various other problems relating to that door are also fixed, but as tomorrow is the last day the car can be re-tested I swapped the controllers, reassembled the door and whizzed the car back down to the garage for them to look at. After that I just need to deal with the alternator issue. Well, I say "just". In fact I now have a log from VCDS with all the details from the car. I couldn't justify the price tag, but an acquaintance who has a copy kindly offered to run a scan for me. So I have a file with "useful" stuff like this: Address 03: ABS Brakes Labels:. 1K0-907-379-MK70M.clb ... 1 Fault Found: 01309 - Power Steering Control Module (J500) 008 - Implausible Signal Just need to work out how to interpret it now, but I see the manual is online so hopefully that will help me through. James

In my case, since the door controller hasn't been changed, I guess that makes the door controller failing more of a plausible reason. Looks like a date with VCDS is in my near future to see if it will tell me anything useful.

After resolving my "front passenger door won't unlock" issue sufficiently to pass an MOT, my Octavia has now failed on the passenger door indicator repeater not working. However, the garage has ascertained that the LEDs function and that the problem must lie elsewhere. They can't find any wiring issues inside the rubber boot between the door and the car body, but neither can they find the cause of the problem. They have noticed however that the front passenger electric window doesn't work when operated from the passenger door switch even though it works when operated from the driver's door switch, which may or may not be related. Does anyone have a clue where the problem might be? It has been suggested to me that the window regulator/controller unit may be involved somehow, but not suggested in a way that was particularly convincing 😆 However, if that might also be the reason that the door wouldn't unlock in the first place, perhaps it's worth looking into further. James

Good point. Anyone in the Taunton (Wiveliscombe) area who might be able to help? Sadly I can't bring the car to you as it no longer has an MOT and, even more awkwardly, appears to have a dead alternator (which might actually be the cause of the airbag issue in the first place, I guess). Meanwhile I shall go back to looking for a reader that might actually do the job 😆 James

The light is bright. It goes off briefly after the ignition is turned on and then comes back on again so I'm not immediately inclined to believe there is a connection fault in the dash. Looks like there are quite a few OBD2 readers that don't say whether they manage airbag codes (and some usefully say that they definitely don't). I suspect mine may be in the first group and I didn't pay attention when I bought it. I'll look for another. James

After many shennanigans after my passenger side door lock failed whilst deadlocked on my 12-plate Octavia estate, I now have an airbag warning light showing on the dash. I thought I'd check with my OBD2 reader to see if it could tell me any more, like perhaps which airbag it thought was at fault. My reader however reports no error codes at all. Does anyone know if that's expected for this particular age/model? I have a feeling that airbag systems did not always report faults via OBD2, but I'm far from certain. Meanwhile I shall be trying to check all the connectors manually having read through a few posts here about possible locations of connectors. James

Just to close out on this, the door is now reassembled. There's still a cabling fault that I have yet to find -- the door doesn't deadlock at all, but I can live with that for the time being. In the end I used Tek screws to re-attach the inner door skin to the outer rather than rivets. Not ideal, but it does the job. Now I just have to deal with the airbag warning light. But that's for another thread I think. James

Another weekend, another session playing with the car door. For a change, replacing the lock was an absolute doddle. Half an hour's work, including what appears to be supposedly the tricky bit of getting the bowden cable reconnected to the outside handle. Now I need to find some screws to fasten the inner door skin because I'll be damned if I'm going to rivet it back on. Of course it can't be ignored that cars still hate me, so whilst I've been dealing with this it would appear that something has happened with the alternator. The battery warning light on the dash comes on within about thirty seconds of the engine being started. At the moment I'm not sure I have the motivation to deal with that myself. Perhaps the alternator has just given up the ghost. If it's the original (and I have no reason to believe it isn't), maybe after 170,000 miles it could be forgiven. In fact it's not the only warning light showing. The airbag warning stays on, too. I suspect that might be something to do with the wiring in the door not being connected however (even though there's not actually an airbag in the door). We'll see about that when I get it all reassembled. James

We have re-entry! I resorted to the "lump hammer and cold chisel" method of operating the central locking in the end. I took out the only torx screw in the lock that I could reach and then gutted the lock by driving the cold chisel into the join, smashing the internals into small pieces. I finally reached the "bolt" that forms the deadlock and prying that out with a hefty flat bladed screwdriver meant the door could just be popped open by operating the normal mechanism. I do feel a bit bad about wrecking the lock when it might in fact be working perfectly fine, but without doing so there's really no simple way for a simple person like me to find the problem. James

Can't see any obvious damage to the cables in the driver's side, though I did find a small fragment of glass inside the rubber. I guess at some point prior to me owning it, the driver's window was broken. The problem could of course be in the passenger door, but... Unless there's some practical way to test the wiring loom or to apply voltage to the relevant pins of the existing lock mechanism, I think tomorrow the lock must be destroyed in order to get the door open. If that's done, I can replace the lock, reassemble everything and at least take it for an MOT. In all honesty, I can probably live with the door not locking for a fair while. The car will mostly be used to get me to work where it can be parked safely, and from some time in March as a "bee van", which could get a bit exciting for anyone who decides to mess about with it. James

Might as well check the driver's door I guess. I can't get the passenger door open, after all 😆 James

My replacement door lock arrived and I've finally got to the point where I can fit it. I thought I'd test it first, so I plugged it in to the wiring harness. When I operated the locks, nothing happened 😡 I am concerned this might mean there's an electrical problem elsewhere which could be a nightmare to find. Anyone know if any of the other door electrics have any effect on the operation of the lock? I'm wondering if I should reconnect all the electrics to the inner door skin and see if that makes any difference before hiding in the corner of the workshop and bursting into floods of tears 😆 James

Same thing happened with my daughter's C1 about a month ago. i used the Dremel cut-off wheel to remove both the nut and the splined bush. Worked a treat. I cut through the nut as far as I dared on opposite sides and it then broke apart when I put a socket on it to try to turn it. The bush I had to cut diagonally because there wasn't clearance to cut along its length and then I just levered it apart with a screwdriver until it fell off. James

No problem. It is a whole lot easier if you're able to open the door, I suspect. The manual I'm using is here. James

Progress this morning is that I now have the dowels removed, the window taped closed and the steel door liner removed. The dowels came out quite easily in the end using the above procedure with the threaded end of the bolt held in mole grips. Most of the door liner retaining rivets i could drill out, but the two below the speaker I had to grind off with the Dremel. It's very tempting to replace them with hex head self tappers when it comes to reassembling the door. What I haven't been able to do so far is to remove the wiring loom connector from the lock mechanism because I can't work out how to unclip it. I know there's a clip on one side, but I can't see it or feel it. At this point it doesn't look like there's much more that I can do other than destroy the existing lock to get the mechanism to release, so I'm off to order a replacement from that ebay. James