driver's door wont unlock! | Page 4 | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

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driver's door wont unlock!

Old thread but the same problem keeps happening. If the problem has not happened to you yet, just wait. It will.

After reading many threads, it kind of looks like there are a few different problems, so it makes sense to figure out which problem you've got before you start spending money and time.

I have a 98 Explorer, and the front passenger door slowly got to the point where it would not unlock at all. With the actuator button, the lock button would pop up a bit, but then drop back down no matter how many times I hit the button. The inner door handle would move part way, but accomplished nothing. Knowing that the inner door handle mechanism is all plastic, I'm not inclined to pull too hard. And the outer door handle is useless because the door is locked.

Someone suggested putting a screw driver thru the holes under the outside door handle to pry up on the under side of the lock button, but I couldn't find anything to pry on. I thought about trying a slim jim, but don't have one handy. I couldn't see an easy way to remove the inner panel with the door closed and locked. Removing the passenger seat is a lot of work.

Then somewhere I read about someone using vice grips for something. Aha!

I used my vice grips to grab the lock button and pull it up a bit. Then I let go, and got a better grip and I could pull it up a bit more. By the third try I had the lock button up about an inch. And the door handles worked to open the door nice and easy.

And yes, with a flashlight I can see a dangling piece of a small spring inside of the latch mechanism. I'll see if I can get the broken spring out and put some kind of replacement spring back in.

Cheers!
 



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The lock mechanism on the Explorer has a really awkward construction of levers. Actually not just awkward, more like insane to be honest.

A really common problem is this. The spring in the outside door handle breaks or rusts and fails.
The problem when that happens is, that the actuating bar inside the door which is pulled up by the handle to open the door needs to be held up by this spring in the door handle to stay in an upper position, otherwise the door won't unlock.

So all you need to do is either
a) replace the spring in the door handle, which is a bunch of work and really hard to do or
b) and much easier. Add your own spring to pull or push up this actuating bar coming down from the door handle so it comes back up into the proper position, not blocking the lock mechanism anymore.

I wish I had pictures of my solution, but I didn't take any.
There are basically two "simple" ways to do put a spring in. which both require some fiddling in the tight door space though.
The best way is getting a long (enough) spring and hang the top into a hole somewhere near the lock and then custom bend the lower end to go around the plastic part at the bottom to pull it up.

The other solution is to bend your own custom spring in such a way that it goes under the bar and pushes it up from below. This is harder to do than it sounds or may look, because you need to bend the springs end in such a way, that it doesn't snap out and you need to fix it so that it's kept from turning or sliding sideways out and away from under the bar.

If you're creative you can basically even fix this problem with cutting and bending a metal coat hanger into a proper spring shape.

The spring really doesn't need to be very strong at all for this fix to work, but if you get a spring that is a bit stronger, then you can make the door handle not feel all soft and floppy when operating it. On my fixed handle you won't notice any difference when using it.

This posting by Jerzey here has a picture:
I'm not 1000% sure if the first picture in this linked post really shows the bar I'm talking about, but in my car it looked just like that:
In the first picture of Jerzey's post it's the bar with the red marking and the yellow part screwed onto it on the bottom end. (This picture is from the passenger side, so on the driver door it will of course be mirrored.)

When you remove the plastic interior of the door and have the lock and window mechanisms exposed, you can easily check if this is your problem by holding up this actuating bar coming down from the outside handle, while at the same time pressing the unlock button on the remote. If holding that bar up lets let's the remote open the door, then you know this is the problem.

The "proper" fix is sadly pretty expensive for such a small broken spring.
You'd need to drill out the rivets holding the door handle, remove the handle, replace it with a new replacement handle that has a working spring.And then you'd have to mount it all back together.

Adding you own custom spring can not only be MUCH cheaper, but it can also be easier to do, far less work and if done right will likely end up lasting a lot longer.

By the way, I didn't come up with this fix myself, I found it somewhere in this forum over a year ago. So thanks and credit to whoever it was that invented this wonderful solution.
 






I just replaced pretty much all the guts in my driver door and it was a PITA!!! I had a broken exterior handle, interior handle, latch, and lock actuator. It took roughly 2.5 hrs and was not fun. But I'm really proud of myself for having figured it out. I used google and youtube to help.
 






That's something I've got to do in the coming days, I'm supposed to get a parts truck with low miles because at roughly 270K miles, my doors are worn out, latches are all worn out and it's obviously time to put in some work, the door gaskets are also gone, got a nice draft which in hot weather sucks.
 






I'll have to dig in soon and fix mine. The I think the neighbors have a pool going when I go to unlock the door to see how long it takes
salute_zps5fbeb823.jpg
. Right now if I jiggle the handle while turning the key, move it up and down, jiggle some more. bump the door, etc. Sometimes 30sec. sometimes a couple minutes.
Thanks to the Veterans.
 






Old thread but the same problem keeps happening. If the problem has not happened to you yet, just wait. It will
This is my third second gen. Never had an issue with locking/unlocking. Whenever I have my door panels off I use dry graphite spray, and white lithium spray on the various moving parts inside the door, depending on where/what it is. Everything is smooth like butter.
 






Thanks for the ideas. I have one LF door handle that flops from a broken spring there. I didn't know that the spring did anything else, I'll have to watch out for that issue.
 






Just had the same issue. If you live where it’s cold or if the temp drops (got below 20 here last night) I found out a way to get in is to simply pour hot water over the lock. Slowly. Key worked perfectly after I did that. I’m guessing my lock was just frozen.
 






Oh, man...that might work in GA where the temps will rebound to above freezing in the next day or so. But, here in the Northland, it's common knowledge you don't ever pour hot water on anything to thaw it out (especially, de-icing windows as they will shatter) because it will just re-freeze and cause even more problems. They make an aerosol de-icing spray for frozen locks.
 






Yeah, water is a terrible idea. Use de-icer and then graphite.
 






Ditto. Water can help in an emergency if you do keep it off the windows. But the car has to warm up enough to displace any water that gets into the latch etc, by way of long driving or actually using something to lubricate the latch etc.

This time of year is also when people discover the door itself gets stuck to the car, to the door seal actually. Now or before Winter once a year is a great time to clean and lubricate the door seals. I like WD40 but there are better products for rubber. Many of my seals are going to be replaced, so using WD40 is no long term issue for mine.
 






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