I have a 53 plate Octavia 1.9 TDI L & K estate, which now has a permanently locked rear passenger door.

The fault started last week when I unlocked the doors via the keyfob. Three doors & the boot unlocked but not the rear drivers side door. It did unlock when I pulled the internal handle but would only lock by pushing down the knob. It carried on like this for a couple of days until the one time I forgot to push the knob down before locking the car. When I locked the doors via the keyfob all of the buttons went down & now the faulty door has remained locked.

Now when you pull the internal handle the knob comes up but does not unlock the door, & I can't pull the knob any higher. I have even tried gripping the knob connection rod with pliers after taking the tweeter out.

I odviously need to remove the door panel to get to the locks, has anyone removed the panel with the door shut? Can access the door panel fixing screws if I remove the plastic covers around the door aperture?

I have been quoted £80 for the lock + "However long it takes to get the door open" by the dealer. So you can see why I want to do it myself.

I had the same problem on my 53 Seat Toledo, rear door totally locked shut. Ignored it for a while but had to get it fixed for the MOT. Took it to a local independant and it ended up costing £450 to fix :eek:.

The lock itself was about £100, they had to break the old one to get it off, the rest was labour as i think it took them 8 hours to get the door open and refit a new lock. And this was a very experienced mechanic who i've known for a while.

After it was fixed the cental locking wouldn't unlock all the doors on the key button, only manually. Disconnected the battery for a couple of hours to reset the ecu and worked ok again. Part ex'd it for the octavia just after that as other things started to go wrong.