Done Door Lock Rebuild, (was Re: Speaking of door locks)

[Drew Mouton <drew@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,
For Henry and the others with E30 electronic lock problems over the last 
month or two, I finally got the kit and had time to rebuild mine 
yesterday, and here's the recap of how it went.

First, thanks to Neil Deshpande for the picts that show what it's like to 
pull the cylinders:
http://www.neilwerke.com/newpage1.htm

1. The Parts
My local dealership had to special order a "Passenger Door Electronic 
Lock Cylinder Rebuild Kit," which cost me $36. List price is $51. As far 
as I can tell, the pieces inside will work just as well for either door 
(as you'll see later in this msg), on either side, but they told me that 
two part number were listed for the right and the left. 

Also note that there's a diagram in the packet, but all labels and 
descript are in german.

2. The Doors - 10minutes.
Using Neil's pictures to orient me to what I had to do, it took about 5 
minutes to remove three screws in the arm rest, remove the armrest, 
remove the door handle faschia, gently pop the panel retaining clips away 
from the door itself, lift the door panel up and off.

It took another 5 minutes to see the flat C-clip that was holding the 
lock cylinder to the door, reach in with pliers and lever it out, then 
remove the cylinder and its actuating arm out past the electronic lock 
actuator, metal reinforcing plate and the door itself. Remember that the 
windows need to be rolled up and out of the way, and you'll benefit I 
think from a small flashlight which will allow you to see exactly what's 
goin on inside the door.

3. The Cylinders - 2 hours
In my case, upon seeing the passenger side cylinder, it was clear that 
nothing was broken, the tumblers were just set incorrectly. I'm guessing 
that the Idiot Previous Owner replaced the door at some point without 
bothering to have the lock re-set.

This was a good thing, though, as it turns out: I figured I ought to pull 
the driver's side lock cylinder so that I could match the tumbler 
configuration (took 5 minutes to get that one out), and on doing so found 
that it was of an older style, and nearly broken. 

I'd never worked with lock cylinders, so I didn't really know what I was 
doing at the time, but in hindsight I could have just as easily swapped 
tumblers (or what should they be called?) in and out of the passenger 
lock cylinder on a trial and error basis until the key made them all sit 
flush in the cylinder. But I thought I needed the (working) driver 
cylinder in order to figure out the tumbler combination.

BTW, you'll see this when you get the kit, but all the tumblers have 
numbers which correspond to how deep they sit in the cylinder. 

In any case, after understanding what I needed to do, the hardest thing 
was simply finding the right sized nail to use to tap out the pin at the 
rear of the cylinder - this pin holds the whole cylinder stack together. 
After getting it out, all the pieces came apart (note where and how the 
rotating spring sits in the cylinder before fully dis-assembling it), I 
pulled the tumblers, replaced the tumbler springs, then swapped tumblers 
until the internal cylinder rotated freely in the external cylinder when 
the key was inserted. 

Incidentally, my driver's side lock had always been just a little bit 
'sticky;' it worked but required some jiggling of the key to work 
correctly. Once inside it, I chose to slightly change the combination of 
tumblers - and voila! Key works perfectly. Apparently the last person to 
do this did a shoddy job.

I cleaned everything, reassembled it all, made sure to lubricate the 
internal (rotating) cylinder with some light grease (petroleum jelly 
should work), then pushed the pin back in place. I had to do this twice 
for each lock, because once I put the rotating spring in the wrong place, 
and once I forgot to lubicate the internal cylinder. When you do the 
reassembly, make sure that the cylinder arm is oriented in the correct 
direction - both sides have the cylinder arm oriented towards the rear of 
the car, but of course that means that when locks from both sides of the 
car are side-by-side, the arms will be mirror images of each other.

4. Re-insertion - 20 minutes
Time to put it back in. You'll see that inside the door are two important 
pieces: the 'fork' that the lock cylinder arm slides in between (which is 
what controls the mechanical lock on that particular door), and the 
electronic actuator, which is attached to the metal reinforcing plate. 
They really only fit together one way, it may just take a bit of effort 
to get everything tweaked in there correctly.

FYI, the electronic actuator is triggered when the lock cylinder arm 
rotates up - but it only works when all the pieces are installed and 
grounded against the bare metal of the inside of the door.

In any case, that flashlight came in handy again, to be able to see what 
was going on, and a bit of pushing and prodding got the C-clips securely 
set back in place. Another 5 minutes per door to replace all the door 
trim, and I was done.

Upshot - a car with locks that all work correctly, and are even more 
closely matched to my keyset.

Farily straightforward job, just a little tedious getting the lock 
tumblers set. Hope your experience goes as well.

Cheers,
Drew

It appears that on 12/13/00 7:41 AM, Henry H Kim at henryhkim@domain.elided 
said:

>My '89 325iX is exhibiting some wacky behavior with its door locks.  The

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