Rear OS door locked and will not open

[Billy Balthorpe]

As the title says, the drivers side rear door on my 2009 Octavia will not unlock, either via the central locking, inside, or outside, or a combination of yanking away at the outside and inside while my Lad tries to unlock via the key. Ive also tried thumping the area where (I think) the mechanism is while pressing the unlock button and using the handles.

Ive put my ear against the door and I can hear the "thunk" of the mechanism trying to open the door when I press the unlock function on the key, but it just wont open. So it cant be the "Damaged wiring" theory because the unlock mechanism is getting the signal to open and actuating the unlock solenoid.

My question is, how the hell am i going to take off the inner panels to be able to get at the unlock mechanism (If i will be able to, from the inside of a locked door) and figure out what is wrong, from the inside of a locked door? From what i've seen on Youtube, removing the door panels requires the door to be open?

 

Can anyone offer any advice?  

Edited 5 December, 2023 by Billy Balthorpe
Correction.

[simontaylor]

followng , because I have the same issue.

[Billy Balthorpe]

I just hope someone comes up with some advice. Maybe the middle of the door card can be undone and pulled back exposing a hole or something so a bent coat hanger can be inserted to pull or push on the locking arm, which presumably has stuck in the lock position. But I'm just guessing.

[Billy Balthorpe]

OK, now its stopped raining and ive got some daylight I've had a bit of a mess around with the door. I've figured out that no matter how many times i pull the outside handle it was never going to open. Mainly because, the "Mechanic" who owned the car before me had disconnected the cable from the door handle. 

So I removed the little plastic cover next to the handle and was able to get a very stiff coat hanger wire through the gap between the pulled open handle and the part of the handle assembly that stays still when you pull it. There is a useful video here showing what the problem actually is.

 

 

 

 

It explains why the lock is not re setting, because the lever shown in the video is not returning all the way back. So I got in with my thick coat hanger and generally pushed everything back that I could get it planted on. Then opened the window so I could yank away at the inside door handle whilst double pressing the key unlock and hey presto, it popped open! I closed it, locked it and tried again but it failed. So i poked and pressed a bit more and did the same thing with the door handle/key, and it worked again. Ive since given the door some serious slams and now it seems to work every time or thereabouts. At least now I know I can get the door open so I can strip it down and sort it, probably by removing the spring as shown in the video and re connecting the external door pull cable.  

 

Hope this helps you out  simontaylor.

 

[Billy Balthorpe]

The only problem I can see is that you HAVE to remove the outer door pull cable from the outer handle to be able to push the lever inside back so it re sets. If I were you, I would get some fishing line braid and tie it around the cable before you pull the nipple out of the handle, so that once you get the door open you can re connect it by pulling on the braid and re attaching the nipple to the handle.