Locks

The Passenger Door

The Bent Tab

My passenger door was locking on me and wouldn't unlock when closed. I got it to open, and I changed the lock mechanism but it's doing the same thing. When the door is open the lock will slide up and down easily but when the door is closed it doesn't work. It only moves a 1/4 of the way and does nothing.

Don't know why I didn't do this earlier. It took me 2 minutes to work out, seriously...

The little tab just needs to be bent back up right.

When it goes like this the lever that's moved into place to unlock is blocked. Looks like it may be a common problem.

From another angle, the tab needed to be bent up a bit to line up with the lever circled in red.

- Naife

The Screw Fix

The current fix for the door lock problem, bending that tab back, works fine for me at first but after doing it a couple of times the tab became weak and nearly fell off. So my brother and I came up with a solution, all you need is a drill and 1 screw.

Here's a pic of a door lock with the usual problem -

The bottom red circle is the tab that bends down over time. The fix we came up with is simple, drill a hole just above here and put a screw in to act as a tab, leaving about half the screw sticking out. Just gotta make sure its not too far up, otherwise the door latch will stay open.

Will try get pics of my lock with the screw shortly.

-Jonno

Properly Documented Fix

I know someone's covered this before, but when I needed the help to fix mine, all I found was blurry pictures.

So here is my guide on how to fix these little nightmares.

• 1 Take it out of the car a bit of prying and pulling, some plastic clips and 3 screws.

• 2 You can bend this tab that I have highlighted in blue, back to its original position as the picture below shows.

HOWEVER, give it a few hours, minutes, days, maybe weeks if you don't use that door too often, and it will be bent back to the non working position again. I know this because I did it, and within 6 tries of it, it bent back to non working position again.

• 3 My second attempt shows what happens when the bent tab gets to frail, it literally snapped clean off!!

So, I had to think and get creative with stuff in the garage to fix this.

• 4 The picture bellow shows in the LIGHT BLUE outline, where the tab should be so everything work ok, The YELLOW, is where your tab will be if your doors don't unlock. When you unlock your door, the GREEN bit slides over the back side of the RED bit and makes the door ready for unlock. HOWEVER, if the red bit is not turned CLOCKWISE in the right position so the green bit can slide over, you get stuck and your door wont unlock!!

• 5 Finally, I've outlined in the GREEN the bit of metal I improvised with, to make this thing never ever break again. Simple piece of metal, with a screw to hold it in place, the screw can be up to 1cm in length and will not affect to operation of the lock mechanism.

Good luck with fixing your locks!! I hope I have helped in some way.

- R31_747 Andy Christou

How To Open The Door After Mechanism Fails

First take off the rear step protector trim, which makes it easier to take off the B-pillar trim, which exposes the part you're trying to get to.

Take off the inner door release trim, the inner pull handle, the window winder, the speaker, and the triangular trim behind the side mirror.

Now the tricky part, you've got to pry off all the door trim clips, without proper access. Then ease the side of the trim out over the B-pillar, and lift up to clear the top of the door. After a bit of fiddling around, it all comes off, hopefully not destroying too much of the trim. Here are all the clip locations:

This photo is from inside the door looking up at the mechanism. The part highlighted in yellow must be rotated clockwise (tab on left goes up) to open the door (it's already in the open position in this photo). Get a screwdriver in there to push it up:

The little pull levers that operate it all are attached by this kind of clip. Rotate the retaining clip (red part in the middle) then the lever just pulls out with no force required at all. Some of them are a bit hard to reach, but you can leave some of the levers attached to the lock, and detach them at the other end, whatever you can reach.

Here's a little brace (following R31 747's idea) made from some aluminium square stock to stop the tab bending down again:

Brace in place:

Problem was compounded by probable disintegrated bush. It appears there should to be a bush around the circled shaft. With it missing, the shaft flogs around and makes the locking mechanism less predictable. Didn't take other door apart, but looks like a brittle plastic almost disintegrated bush on other side as well. So looking for a solution there still. Mechanism still all works, but the shaft should be supported.

- Prestagea

The Driver's Door

Righto,

Pardon the french, but what a head fuck.

My initial problem was that the lock linkage to the latch wasn't in correctly. I put it back in and the lock worked fine, I popped it up and down a dozen times, and it detached itself a few times, anyway that's an easy fix. But I thought considering had the trim off I'd take those photos of my latch. Lucky I did too.

Seems that I do have a lock different to those in the tech section above. Pics as follows.

The images of the passenger locks show a screw through a part that (on my lock) has a moving part behind it. I couldn't quite tell what its operation was but it obviously wouldn't move with a screw through it. I decided to super glue a piece of metal there but its life was short lived lol.

Here in the red you can see where I super glued the plastic piece, but as I said, its life was short lived. AND to my delight in green, a small fissure on the tab. So now I had the tab problem, and obviously no where to do the screw fix. Giving me a mental headache.

Finally decided the only solution for driver's door was to get a new lock mech, $233 brand new from Nissan, I figured it's worth it if it lasts another 18 years. I didn't get any pics but the little tab is thicker on the new one and the hammer part that hits it has a rubber brace around it, seems Nissan noticed this problem and remedied it.

-SILO-31