Hi there, new user signing in with a few electrical gremlins!

 

So, I have a 2008 model Skoda Octavia 4x4 Combi Scout that my wife drives as a daily runner. The other day she started complaining that the driver side (left) rear door does not lock. At first I just thought that the lock was frozen so I gave it a run with a heat gun and spray vaseline and got it working. It however lasted only for a day. Today I looked better into it and noticed the whole door is out of power, the electric window doesn`t work, the lock doesn`t work and the car does not seem to "see" the whole door as the MFD doesn`t show it as open. I took the door card off in hopes to find a broken lock motor or something but instead found a metal plate riveted to the inside of the door, first time for everything. As the window mechanism seems to be attached to the plate I didn`t drill the rivets off yet as it seems to be an electrical issue probably somewhere else altogether. I removed the connector from the B-pillar to check it for corrosion but it`s sparkly clean. So, any ideas what would be the issue? The door isn`t used that much so as a bandaid would be awesome if someone would know to tell me what color wires to jump to get the lock to close, my wife regularly goes to the city with the car so we`d preferrably just get it locked for now and start troubleshooting later. I see the connector that goes into the lock so I see the wires that go into it, but cannot get it off because of the round hole which my fingers doesn`t fit through well enough to do other than poke the connector, which BTW seems to have litte effect. Can`t find a wiring diagram for the door so I could decipher the colors myself and wouldn`t want to guess to prevent further damage.

 

Thanks in advance!

As a short term solution would activating the child lock prevent access from the outside?

You know I`ve never tried but AFAIK it only disables the inside lever. Will try that.

Problem located and fixed. For anyone with the issue of losing all power to one or both rear doors, CHECK THE DRIVER DOOR WIRING LOOM! Three wires completely cut. My wife actually found the hint from another Finnish forum, apparently this is a fairly common issue with Skodas and Vw:s that spend long times in minus celsius temperatures, the thin wires get hard and brittle and eventually snap. It`s an easy fix, you don`t have to dismantle the door, just tug the rubber "snorkel" thing out of the A-pillar, it is held in place with a white plastic collar with four clips, there are three connectors underneath. Unplug the connectots and tug the other end of the snorkel thingy out of the door, similar plastic collar with clips there aswell. Slide the rubber off the wires and you`ll see the damage. A 30 min job with a construction light and gas powered solder in the frost. The narliest part is to get the connectors back through the rubber, bundle them together with some electrician`s tape and maybe smear a little dish washing liquid for lubrication if they won`t come through.

Good to hear you found the problem and managed to fix it.