Drivers door central locking stopped working.

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Drivers door central locking stopped working.

duckDecoy

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#280828 13-Jan-2021 09:50

We have a 2005 Toyota Avensis which has developed an issue with the drivers door lock.

I use a key fob to lock and unlock the car. We have a spare key fob but its run out of batteries. The other day my partner needed to borrow the car that I had parked at the ferry building. As I had the working fob at work and couldn't get it to her she took the flat fob and used the physical key to manually unlock the driver door and start the car.

Oddly, now when I use the fob it opens all the doors EXCEPT for the driver door, which I have to manually open with the key. All other doors work fine. Opening the driver door manually with the key also doesn't unlock any other doors which for some reason in my head I thought it did - but I could be remembering wrong.

My question is : is this a thing that has happened whereby we have disabled the driver door central locking somehow? Of course it could just have suddenly broken, it just seems so coincidental to have happened straight after my partner unlocked the door with the key that I am wondering if we've done something.

freitasm

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#2634719 13-Jan-2021 09:57

If it's like some VW models it could be a problem with the cables breaking due to use. Ours had this - the electrician replaced the cables and the problem disappeared.

mgeek

122 posts

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#2634734 13-Jan-2021 10:23

I think it has a passenger side lock (? some do, some don't) - what happens if you use the manual key in that?

BlinkyBill

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#2634736 13-Jan-2021 10:25

I had a 2004 VW Golf, and all of a sudden, over a 2-3 month period, three of the doors had their doorlock actuators fail. Was bloody annoying.

frankv

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#2634758 13-Jan-2021 11:06

I used to own a 1990 Toyota MR2. It strikes me that your 2005 Avensis is about as old as my MR2 was when it had a similar problem.

tl;dr -- A broken wire in the loom between the driver's door and body. Wiggling this wire loom may temporarily fix the problem (or make it worse, in which case wiggle some more). It will get worse over time.

Long story --

A common fault on MR2s was failure of the central locking and/or electric windows and/or electric mirrors. The problem was the wires that run into the driver's door near the hinges which would eventually break due to metal fatigue from repeated bending cycles as the door was opened and shut. The problem was always the driver's door, because that's the one that opens and closes the most. The break wasn't visible because the wire conductor was broken inside the insulation, but the insulation was intact. Depending on which wire(s) were broken, various different faults occurred, and often intermittently as the broken wire ends sometimes touched. On the MR2, all the circuitry for the locking was in the driver's door, so passenger-side faults were actually due to breaks in the driver's door wiring. Wiggling the wire loom and/or supporting it with duct tape and cable ties could sometimes reposition the hidden ends of the wire so that they touched again and everything worked. Sometimes it would last until the next time you closed the door, sometimes for weeks or months. Typically if you do nothing, more wires will break in succession, because the broken wire(s) no longer help support the rest of the bundle, so more bending stress will go on the remaining wires.

Scott3

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#2634763 13-Jan-2021 11:19

I have had a central locking actuator fail on a car years ago. Are you up for removing the door liner and checking If it is getting power with a multimeter?

jpoc

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#2635663 14-Jan-2021 18:35

The front passenger door should have a key slot. Unlock that door with the key and lock it again. Repeat with the drivers door. Then try the button on the key fob again.

Software glitch. Seen it before.

timmmay

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#2635674 14-Jan-2021 19:34

One of the doors of my 2003 Corolla stopped locking automatically. It was a plastic part that'd worn out, the garage got a second hand part and it's working fine again. Can't remember what it cost, wasn't too bad.