Door locked, won't open...how to fix (1 Viewer)

[FJBen]

Well, friday night when I went to put my rig in the garage it happened. I unlocked the door with the key and heard a strange little "ting" sound like something fell...hmmm got in and parked in the garage and locked it.

I had to go run an errand and I couldn't unlock the drivers dorr. All the others unlocked. So I climbed in and backed it out. Couldn't unlock the door from the inside either.

So i basically had to start gutting the cruiser from the inside.

#1 Take out drivers seat, 4 14mm bolts, 1 electrical connection

#2 Take out rear door trim at the bottom of the doorway

#3 Take out trim piece covering B-pillar (you might have to take seatbelt bolt out on the bottom, but the trim piece should come over that)

#4 Pop the armrest off with a screwdriver or your hand. There are 2 phillilps screws. The other is on the upper part of the handle.

#5 Open inner handle to take trim piece off, phillips screw.

#6 Pop black triangle piece off thats directly across from the mirror. (careful easy to break)

#7 Pop door panel off by carefully prying ...it's a bit tight to reach it.

#8 Once you get that panel off, there are 2 phillips heads screws that take the power window/doorlock controller off the door. Then you can peel back the plastic and look inside the door

#9 You should be able to see/feel the door "rails" now. You'll have to reach and grab this part (RED ARROW) and lift up on it, then you will be able to unlock and open the door.

#10 Once the door is open, take off the two "rails" that connect to the outer door handle. One is for the door lift, the other for the keep. A plastic piece holds them on.

#11 Take off the 2 10mm bolts than hold the outer handle on, take the handle off.

#12 On the edge of the door is a silver 10mm bolt. Take that off, it hold the window track tight. That will allow you to pull off the "security plastic guard"

#13 The green arrow is the spring that broke and was at the bottom of the door. You should be able to find the spring in your door as well. I went to ACE hardware, found a spring that was as close as possible to the spring. 60 cents later I was good to go. You can see on the mechanism where is has to two cutouts for the spring to fit. Put it on, and now that piece in Red Arrow stays up and the door unlocks/locks/opens great.

Just reverse it all to put it back together.


You could probably do it without taking the handle off the other side, but it was much easier getting my hands through to put the spring on that way. If you get lost, just open up the passenger door and try to see how it works and what is different.

The first pic is from inside the door looking up.

Second is from the outside door handle looking in.

 

[CJF]

Good job.

Common problem, but for some reason a lot of folks claim they just can't get into the door while it's closed and give up.

Cheers,

Curtis

 

[sseaman]

Nice writeup, i can see this coming in handy

 

[FJBen]

It just takes a few minutes of tinkering with all the pieces, at least it took me a few minutes to see how it all worked. I figured if I took pics of it, someone might be able to do it quicker/easier now that you can see whats going on in there.

The little spring didn't fall out until I pulled that plastic security guard.

 

[badmuthatrucka]

Great job Ben! I love thinking about someone your size doing all of this inside the cruiser. Just glad I haven't had to do it yet.

 

[FJBen]

Yeah, being 6'4" 190 has it's drawbacks. It's REALLY tight in there, which is why I think it's easier to pull the outer door handle as well.

 

[spywebco]

Driver's door won't unlock to open

Please note, having just completed the 3 hour tour of getting the door functioning again, there are 2 probable causes. I didn't find the thread for the repair of the "silver loop ended" spring that comes off it's two retaining clips until after complete disassembly to repair the worn plastic from the spring on the inside from the thread that I could find relatively easily. Here are the posts to both so that you don't wind up tearing your hair out trying to figure out which one applies to you.

https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/203423-door-locked-wont-open-how-fix.html

https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/55406-pdl-pesky-door-latch-confirmed-heres-fix-pm.html

I had the first one and was able to salvage (bend and reform) the end of the spring which broke. The second repair requires a little more disassembly. Neither one are overly hard, just a little time consuming. I was all done, cleaned up, and half way through this post and half a cold beer by three hours and fifteen minutes.

 

[Crusin]

THANK YOU for the post!!!!

 

[Florida 80]

Hey guys, I know this thread is a little dated, but I wanted so say thanks! I had the same problem today and I took care of it thanks to Mud.

I had the "melted" side problem with the assembly. The spring had pushed thru the side of the plastic, so I cut a small section of sheet aluminum and used a soldering iron to melt it into the plastic assembly (after I melted the plastic and got the spring out). I finally used another piece of aluminum an some gorilla glue to re enforce the wall. I got it all back together and seems to be working great. Thanks to all that contributed to this thread.

 

[Omri]

I'm having the same issue it seems.

But having trouble locating that red arrow part.

I was able to open the panel and stick my hand inside the door to play with everything I can see but the door won't open. Nor sure I'm pulling on the right part though.

Took a few pics, but can't find much similarities to my mechanism.

What am I missing ??

 

[Dickinson58601]

Well, friday night when I went to put my rig in the garage it happened. I unlocked the door with the key and heard a strange little "ting" sound like something fell...hmmm got in and parked in the garage and locked it.

I had to go run an errand and I couldn't unlock the drivers dorr. All the others unlocked. So I climbed in and backed it out. Couldn't unlock the door from the inside either.

So i basically had to start gutting the cruiser from the inside.

#1 Take out drivers seat, 4 14mm bolts, 1 electrical connection

#2 Take out rear door trim at the bottom of the doorway

#3 Take out trim piece covering B-pillar (you might have to take seatbelt bolt out on the bottom, but the trim piece should come over that)

#4 Pop the armrest off with a screwdriver or your hand. There are 2 phillilps screws. The other is on the upper part of the handle.

#5 Open inner handle to take trim piece off, phillips screw.

#6 Pop black triangle piece off thats directly across from the mirror. (careful easy to break)

#7 Pop door panel off by carefully prying ...it's a bit tight to reach it.

#8 Once you get that panel off, there are 2 phillips heads screws that take the power window/doorlock controller off the door. Then you can peel back the plastic and look inside the door

#9 You should be able to see/feel the door "rails" now. You'll have to reach and grab this part (RED ARROW) and lift up on it, then you will be able to unlock and open the door.

#10 Once the door is open, take off the two "rails" that connect to the outer door handle. One is for the door lift, the other for the keep. A plastic piece holds them on.

#11 Take off the 2 10mm bolts than hold the outer handle on, take the handle off.

#12 On the edge of the door is a silver 10mm bolt. Take that off, it hold the window track tight. That will allow you to pull off the "security plastic guard"

#13 The green arrow is the spring that broke and was at the bottom of the door. You should be able to find the spring in your door as well. I went to ACE hardware, found a spring that was as close as possible to the spring. 60 cents later I was good to go. You can see on the mechanism where is has to two cutouts for the spring to fit. Put it on, and now that piece in Red Arrow stays up and the door unlocks/locks/opens great.

Just reverse it all to put it back together.


You could probably do it without taking the handle off the other side, but it was much easier getting my hands through to put the spring on that way. If you get lost, just open up the passenger door and try to see how it works and what is different.

The first pic is from inside the door looking up.

Second is from the outside door handle lookin

Well, friday night when I went to put my rig in the garage it happened. I unlocked the door with the key and heard a strange little "ting" sound like something fell...hmmm got in and parked in the garage and locked it.

I had to go run an errand and I couldn't unlock the drivers dorr. All the others unlocked. So I climbed in and backed it out. Couldn't unlock the door from the inside either.

So i basically had to start gutting the cruiser from the inside.

#1 Take out drivers seat, 4 14mm bolts, 1 electrical connection

#2 Take out rear door trim at the bottom of the doorway

#3 Take out trim piece covering B-pillar (you might have to take seatbelt bolt out on the bottom, but the trim piece should come over that)

#4 Pop the armrest off with a screwdriver or your hand. There are 2 phillilps screws. The other is on the upper part of the handle.

#5 Open inner handle to take trim piece off, phillips screw.

#6 Pop black triangle piece off thats directly across from the mirror. (careful easy to break)

#7 Pop door panel off by carefully prying ...it's a bit tight to reach it.

#8 Once you get that panel off, there are 2 phillips heads screws that take the power window/doorlock controller off the door. Then you can peel back the plastic and look inside the door

#9 You should be able to see/feel the door "rails" now. You'll have to reach and grab this part (RED ARROW) and lift up on it, then you will be able to unlock and open the door.

#10 Once the door is open, take off the two "rails" that connect to the outer door handle. One is for the door lift, the other for the keep. A plastic piece holds them on.

#11 Take off the 2 10mm bolts than hold the outer handle on, take the handle off.

#12 On the edge of the door is a silver 10mm bolt. Take that off, it hold the window track tight. That will allow you to pull off the "security plastic guard"

#13 The green arrow is the spring that broke and was at the bottom of the door. You should be able to find the spring in your door as well. I went to ACE hardware, found a spring that was as close as possible to the spring. 60 cents later I was good to go. You can see on the mechanism where is has to two cutouts for the spring to fit. Put it on, and now that piece in Red Arrow stays up and the door unlocks/locks/opens great.

Just reverse it all to put it back together.


You could probably do it without taking the handle off the other side, but it was much easier getting my hands through to put the spring on that way. If you get lost, just open up the passenger door and try to see how it works and what is different.

The first pic is from inside the door looking up.

Second is from the outside door handle looking in.
View attachment 207537View attachment 207538

To FJBen: Thank you for your two photographs of the door latch mechanism, this helps me quite a bit in figuring out how this functions. I live in North Dakota, and we just had a heavy snowfall, with temperatures about 10 degrees F. My 1992 Toyota Landcruiser door was frozen shut, I pulled and pulled on the outer door handle to try to get the door open, and I believe that I broke the same SPRING that you broke, because my door will no longer open from either the inside or the outside. It is too cold for me to take the driver's seat out, and all the steps to disassemble the door panel, and I'm not going through this again. So I AM GOING TO TAKE A DREMEL AND CUT AN ACCESS PANEL IN THE DRIVER'S DOOR PANEL. I'm not taking this door panel off this time, or any other time to get to this problematic spring. I'll post an udpated if this works.

 

[Dickinson58601]

Good job.

Common problem, but for some reason a lot of folks claim they just can't get into the door while it's closed and give up.

Cheers,

Curtis

From these two photos, and a YouTube video, I can see where the cut-out is behind the door panel material to access the lock/latch mechanism. I'm not taking out my car seat and taking off my door panel every time this door won't open because of a broken $0.50 spring. I'm going to take a dremel tool and cut out a 4"x4" access hatch in my door panel so that I can reach the release lever with my hand, don't know if I'll have enough room to replace this tiny spring onto its eyelets.

 

[Mark W]

From these two photos, and a YouTube video, I can see where the cut-out is behind the door panel material to access the lock/latch mechanism. I'm not taking out my car seat and taking off my door panel every time this door won't open because of a broken $0.50 spring. I'm going to take a dremel tool and cut out a 4"x4" access hatch in my door panel so that I can reach the release lever with my hand, don't know if I'll have enough room to replace this tiny spring onto its eyelets.

Don't bother with that silliness. And don't even think of doing all that the OP did either.

This is not an uncommon problem. I have fixed it on a half dozen '80s over the years.

Roll the window down and go in from the top with a long thin "whatever" that can reach down and manipulate the lever that the spring is supposed to pull on. Do that and you can unlock and open the door. Then just pull the door panel like normal. I always us a longer/softer spring (just one from an assortment purchased at the hardware store) and anchor it to the door structure, using a piece of wleding wire as an extension.

Mark...