Earlier I posted a thread on the site regarding and infuriating central locking problem, on my 2001 1600cc Octavia LX, which I am not able to find now.

The problem was that if the car was parked with the drivers door facing the sunlight, then the servo in that door would loose power completely, meaning that I would need to trot around to the passenger door to unlock all the doors, which funnily enough in turn would unlock the drivers door.

I have now cured the problem. Firstly I was amazed as to how easy it is with the Skoda mk1 to get the door panel off. I had to do the same thing with my previous car, a Vauxhall Carlton, and ended up renewing plastic clips after breaking them off, and I could never get it back on properly, after that, and came to the conclusion that it was never meant to come off after leaving the factory. The Vauxhal Carlton was a pig to work on in more ways than one, which included the distributer cap being almost against the firewall, which meant that a bent screwdriver had to be used to remove the cap. An hours job to turn each screw a half a turn at a time. Seem to remember that it was two of them.

The Skoda job was a piece of cake to do. Disconnected the battery, then parted the two halves of the door handle with a thin knife, then remove the two long screws. I have manually operated windows, and so the winder is removed by just pressing the inside of the handle to release it. Very easy. Then there are three screws at the bottom of the door panel, and four either side of the door. The only minor difficulty was releasing the door panel from the top weather seal, which needed a bit of persuasion. Then it was just a case of disconnecting the door security LED, and uncoupling the the door handle release rod.

After carefully peeling back the polythene weather membrane, so as not to tear it, I disconnected the multi way plug, and gave it a blast of cleaning fluid. reconnected the plug

and temporally reconnected the battery, and tested operation of the servo. Worked just fine, and so disconnected battery again and reassembled. No more problems since, I am pleased to say.

If anyone ever needs to do the same thing, and is not sure how, please contact me.

Soviet.

nice one.