LJWolfs

Hi everyone,

I have a beloved 1992 S4 named Vincent. Vincent has some incredibly finicky door locks, and I would love some ideas on problem solving. The first round of problems (more on those later) seem to be electrical, and I "solved" these by yanking the relay for the power locks, disabling them entirely and sending me back to manual mode. When I did this, though, I became unable to raise the lock pin on the left rear door at all. I thought it was just stiff, so I tugged on it, had someone much stronger than me tug on it... nothing doing. My friend and "guru of the S4" suspects there may be something wrong with the vacuum line in that door, but since I still had access to 3/4 doors, so I decided I could live with it and we haven't taken it apart yet.

This morning, though, when I got to work, I suddenly couldn't get the driver door pin up either. I tried rolling down the window and reaching around to try unlocking it with the key, and I'm pretty sure I would have bent or broken the key before the lock pin gave in. I also tried the inside handle, and it definitely felt a little stiff - it would stay in the open position (without the door opening, of course) but I could fairly easily push it back. It wouldn't spring back on its own, though. I ended up shimmying over the e-brake and exiting through the passenger door - effective, but definitely not ideal, and now I'm thinking it's probably a matter of time before the rest of the locks freeze on me.

Since I have absolutely no power locks at the moment (relay is still out) I'm fairly certain this particular problem is mechanical rather than electrical. I THINK last time I experimented with putting the relay back in, the rear door came unlocked with the fob, so it may do that for the front too. I'll test it today.

So that's the (presumably) mechanical problem. The electrical ones are even more interesting. Here are the electrical problems that I "solved" by taking out the relay:

For a while, I had a few intermittent issues with the seat and mirror memory and the sunroof. The mirrors would often reset to some mystery setting when I turned the car on and off, even after setting all four memory settings to mine. Also, the sunroof would occasionally tilt up for no apparent reason. I was usually able to get it closed by turning the dial just past "closed", a smidge into the "slide open" position (about 7 o'clock, if "closed" is 6 o'clock, if you will). Sometimes after getting out of the car, it would pop up again if in the closed position. I was always able to get it to stay closed if I used the manual key close feature (holding the key in the lock turned towards the rear of the car for a few seconds).

Those issues were livable. Then one day I hit the button on the fob to unlock the doors, and the doors unlocked, then re-locked again. Thinking I was imagining things, I hit the button again - same result. Eventually, the doors stayed unlocked long enough for me to get in the car and get it started. Later that day or the next, I had a similar problem where the locks would snap shut again as soon as I was in the car, arming it, and kicking in the immobilizer, making the engine impossible to start. A couple times it did this and the alarm would go off when I tried to start the car.

Over the next couple of months, sometimes it would only re-lock itself a couple of times before behaving, other times it would re-lock itself and then continue trying to keep locking as if someone was repeatedly hitting the lock button (without the pins coming up in between - it was like some little gremlin was repeatedly trying to lock an already locked door). I would have to sit in the car and patiently wait (sometimes a solid minute) for the locks to stay put and let me start the car. Sometimes the immobilizer would kick in, sometimes it would not.

It would also repeatedly re-lock itself as soon as I took the key out of the ignition when stopping. Eventually I figured out I could open the door before taking the key out rather than sitting in my car for a minute straight waiting for the locks to behave. I think it would start its routine as soon as I switched the car off (before taking the key out) so all my passengers and I got in the habit of opening the doors while the car was still running. Hah!

I also eventually figured out that if I opened the doors manually with the key, the locks would not auto-lock until I opened the door, so my "guru" devised a way around the locking problem for getting in and started reliably. I had to do all these steps:That worked for a while. Then one day I left my lights on and killed the battery. I jumped the car, no big deal, but when I got out at my next stop and locked the car, the lock pins jumped back UP. What??? Sure enough, the tables had turned. Instead of repeatedly re-locking itself, the car suddenly decided to repeatedly UN-lock itself, and that sneaky little gremlin would unlock-unlock-unlock the already unlocked door over and over. I'd have to stand there and wait until it stopped, then I could manually lock it with the key. Oh brother! Once it stopped, it was stopped (I never came back hours later to discover it had unlocked again) but I was always a little nervous that day would come.

Alex (the guru) and I investigated this a little, but eventually decided to "cure the headache by cutting off the head" and yank the relay. I now have no power locks, no memory seats/mirrors, no exterior close option for the sunroof, and no alarm - but no problems with any of those features either! I did have to put the relay back in long enough to unlock the whole thing and then take it back out so that I could get the fuel door and the trunk open. For some reason, my key did not work with the trunk lock. I had a locksmith look at that and clean some rust out, and now the key will turn in the lock but will not do anything. Side question, do any of you know if turning the lock in the trunk lid actually does anything physically, or does it only hit an electrical switch... which is disabled? My trunk and fuel door are just permanently unlocked now (unless I plug in the relay and power-lock everything), so I don't store anything in there, and I hope for the best.

All this was OK until this morning when the driver door decided to freeze. I'm now concerned it's a matter of time before I can't open any doors at all, and that means it's time to get to the bottom of it. From my forum reading so far, it sounds like I should at least check out:

• The central locking switch (possibly faulty and causing the other sunroof/memory/alarm problems - all associated with the key on some level). This could be the root of some/all the electrical problems associated with the locks.
• The vacuum lines in the door(s)
• The lock cylinders? I'm doubtful of these, since the rear door has no key switch and was the first to get stuck.

Any and all input on where best to start looking would be very much appreciated. Vincent and I thank you in advance!

LJWolfs

UPDATE: I went out on my lunch break to see what would happen when I popped the relay back in. Absolutely nothing happened. I tried locking and unlocking the doors with the fob, nothing. I tried hitting the lock switch in the door, nothing. It was like I hadn't plugged the relay back in at all. I'm wondering now if the relay itself was on its way out before and is toast now.

Even stranger, I figured, what the heck, I'd try the key in the stuck driver's door again. It worked like butter, no stiffness or hesitation at all. The interior handle was still a little stiff when I pulled on it, but the key worked the lock up and down as it should several times with no problem. Maybe I was wrong about that problem not being electrical. It was definitely very, very stuck this morning. Now not at all!

I did also call the dealership and they do have both the lock switch and the door latch available (though out of Germany) so I may be able to replace those if need be.

Anyway, at least I can open my door today. We'll see about tomorrow! Happy to hear any suggestions anyone may have before we start popping off trim panels and the like.

RoyBeverly

For these locks, i suggest calling a mechanic than to hire a locksmith. They have more knowledge than lock experts.