Happy Octavia owner - for 5 days!

[nevway]

Bought a 2000 Octavia 1.6GLXi estate as a runaround for work on Monday from an old boy who had it from new. 51K miles and in excellent condition mechanically and bodywise. He did tell me that one of the rear doors did not work off the central locking. Ran round all week in it feeling pleased with myself for finding exactly what I was looking for.

Then it started!!  Driving home on Friday afternoon, the interior light suddenly switched itself on. Must be a faulty door switch - the fault suddenly cleared so I'll look at it later.

The two bulbs in the load area were out so bought two on Saturday. Fitted first one no problem - it worked OK.  Fitted second one & it didn't work then noticed the first one now wasn't working and also the interior light had stopped working. By this time it was starting to snow so decided to leave it till later  and locked the car using the key in the drivers door- (It's none remote) Car locked but all four windows went down and no amount of persuasion would let me remove the key from the lock - the lock also wouldn't turn either way. It is now snowing / raining heavily and all four windows are down! After much fiddling about managed to get key out of the lock and by more fiddling about locking & unlocking the passenger door managed to get the windows up and the car locked.

Looks like today is going to be taken up with removal of door panels and inspecting connectors & wiring as shown on the forums here if weather permits. The joys of owning an old car!

[Saints92]

If you turn the key to unlock and hold it in that position, all the windows should come down (hold it at lock, windows should go up), you also can't remove the key while it's in the unlock/lock position. 

 

Sounds like a barrel/lock problem based on that. 

[nevway]

Thanks Saints  I agree that there seems to be a mechanical problem with the barrel but the issues only occurred after replacing the boot courtesy lamp

Probably just coincidence!

[nevway]

Update ! I must have caused a fuse to blow when changing the courtesy lamp bulbs - the right hand one has very short cables on  it and I can now see that you can easily short the two terminals when trying to manipulate the new bulb in. Looks like I just need the door lock repair kit - I didn't know that all the windows went down if you hold the key in the unlock position.

[mac11irl]

On remote central locking you can via vcds activate it that windows drop if you press/hold the unlock button, so im not very surprused it can be done on non-remote also. Some previous owner probably had it enabled

But yeah,  a short on a seemingly inconsequential circuit in these cars can cause all sorts of electrica loddities

[yesiamtom]

If the previous owner did lots of short journeys (opening and shutting drivers door often) then you should peel back the boot that goes from the door jam to the door, the wires here are about 1cm to short which causes them to rub through, usually appearing at 100+ thousand miles as random electrical problems related to the drivers door.