Central Locking Problems

[Ken newbold]

Could anyone save me time by pointing me in the right direction, is this subject covered elsewhere on this site?

My mates series 2 XM 2.1td has developed a locking problem. When you try to lock the doors, sometimes it will but now most times it opens itself, today it wouldn't lock at all.

Tonight he tells me it's locked fine.

Any ideas?

[noz]

Hi Ken,

Just use the search function at the top right corner of the screen like this:

http://club-xm.com/forum/index.php?showto...central+locking

cheers

noz

[Ciaran]

Hi Ken,

In addition to the thread Noz has pointed you to (where he gives a brillaint explanation of how the system is supposd to work, I might add), your friend's symptoms sound like he may have a sticky motor or linkage in one particular door.

Besides the problem with my car mentioned in the previous thread, I have recently developed the lock-unlock problem. After some searching I determined that the motor in the passenger door was sticking / dead, which of course causes the other doors to immediately unlock, as the dodgy door feeds an unlock signal back to the ECU. Indeed, if I manually lock the passenger door, the others then work fine with the remote, signifying that the motor in that door is dead.

By a similar process of elimination on your friend's car, you should be able to work out which door is causing the issue. In your case, with the intermittent nature of the fault, it sounds like one linkage or motor is merely sticky, rather than completely dead.

Ciarán.

[onthecut]

Hi. Ken.

Another area to look at if it proves to be none of the above is the harness between door and pillar. The constant flexing eventually breaks cables, resulting in no, or intermittent function of the relevant bits. I think every estate I've had has suffered with this on the tailgate harness.

Mike.

[Ciaran]

Ok, I take it back, my lock/unlock problem with the passenger door has now fixed itself. Pass as to the cause....

The above points still apply though....

[aengus-xmv6]

Could also be corrision on the lock/linkage for one of the front doors, do as Ciaran suggests to try determine which, and as a temporary measure, you could unhook the door wiring for that door till you get to sorting it.

Also worth checking is water in the overhead console if it's S1 (not sure if this affects S2 also). If you've recently had the door trim off, the button re-fit is important, too low on the pin and it never quite drops far enough and will unlock itself.

My old J-reg used to play the self lock/unlock, not good when the keys were inside it. Used to remind the garage whenever I dropped it off, just in case.

Dave

[DerekW]

Hi Ciaran,

My car developed the lock/unlock problem last night, locking with the key produced the same click/click, unlocked again. Getting in the car and pushing down the driver's button, the same. The button on the passenger's door locked only that door.

Today I backed the car out of the garage - the left side was hard up against the wall - and, following your idea, locked and unlocked the passengers's door using the key. That sorted out the problem. Thanks!

One other thing I noticed though (I've posted elsewhere asking for advice) was that the indicators don't flash when I lock or unlock.

Derek

[Ciaran]

Hi Derek,

Glad that worked, I suppose the mechanism was just sticky. I'd watch it though, try and get it lubricated as soon as possible, mine had a habit of locking / unlocking when it felt like it due to vibration etc... made for a few hairy moments when I realised I'd left it running with the keys in the ignition! (I didn't have a spare key up until last week).

Re the indicators not flashing, does your alarm work? If the alarm is offline (shares the same fuse with the hydractive computer), then the central locking will still work with the remote, but with no indicator activity, and the deadlocks and alarm (obviously) won't work either.

Ciarán.