Deadlocked doors

Hi all, 

ive used this website for years (usually when something goes wrong) but never joined up or commented. 

Well i I thought I would post something to try and ‘pay back’ the helpful Briskoda community. 

Ive posted this in general because I’ve found that it is an issue which affects various models of VW, Skoda, BMW etc.

deadlocked doors. Where they just won’t open or unlock from inside or outside. 

My Skoda Octavia (2010) has just started to play up (rear drivers side door), at first it wouldn’t open intermittently then it stopped all together. 

Now our family life is really busy at the moment and we have put off getting it fixed as we have needed the use of the car. This door hasn’t opened for a month (we’ve tried) and after a quick visit to the car garage we were told they would need it for two days and it would be expensive because they would have to smash the door card to get access, so the Labour and parts would be costly before they even tackled the lock itself. The only remedy usually seems to be a trip to a car garage which they will tell you it is likely to be damaging and expensive.

Now this jogged my memory and reminded me that I’d had the same conversation about my old golf 5/6 years ago. The golf passenger door was deadlocked and it was like that for a year (only used it for work and rarely needed the passenger door so it wasn’t really inconvenient) now as it happens the golf had a battery issue and I replaced the battery, once the battery was removed and all the electronics had been ‘reset’ the door suddenly started to open. And it worked perfectly well until I sold it 4 years later.

i thought ‘what the hell’ so I disconnected & reconnected the battery to try it. The Skoda door now opens! No issues so far (I have now removed the door card just in case, but if it’s fine in a week I’ll put it back on)

however ive had a look on lots of forums and also spoken to the garage. There’s nothing mentioned about this and the garage couldn’t understand why it would work or be affected. I’m no car engineer but I assume it’s some gremlin in the CPU which is then ‘bumped’ to reset itself?!

anyway I thought it would be worth putting on here because it seems to be a common problem which can cost a lot. It might not work but it’s worth a try? Maybe let me know how it goes?

thanks for the dedicated advice from this forums users over the years. 

Edited 25 February, 20188 yr by Moxy