Yesterday and today's little adventure once again involved The Butcher's work on the left doors.
The key lock on the driver's door has never worked right and the latch was wonky, too. Sometimes, it would only half shut and other times, I'd drive off and, at the first right turn, the door would swing open. While I could deal with locking and unlocking the car by:
1.) using the right side door
2.) using the trunk or
3.) opening the left rear door and pushing down the front lock,
this got a little tiresome. Add in the fact that I would eventually just fall out of the open door and something had to be done.
First, I discovered the little plastic corn was missing, so last weekend, I put one on. That made the door almost impossible to open; so much so that I feared I'd break the handle. So I read up on latch replacement. Not a lot to read. The only thing of note, should you decide to tackle this task, is, "remove the window track".
Huh?
Wading right in, it's easy to find the five fasteners for the latch. Two hexes above the 'mitten', two phillips below it, and a third phillips from the side. Don't forget to pull the door lock actuator down below on the inside, either. Unhook it from the linkage, unplug it and take it clear out. Then, "remove the window track". Hmmm ... Turns out there's a single 10mm bolt down low at the back of the door. That releases the track. Inside, you'll find the window channel comes out easily and there are wire holders on it. Unplug and get those out of the way and the latch will be ready to come out.
FIRST, there's the matter of the door lock connection. It is a clip on a stub. Reach in with a set of needle nose pliers and pull it. There's a spring clip from one side that pushes on the tip of the stub. That's the side it will come off. Just stick the pliers in the spring-side loop and pull. [I didn't have to do this because the linkage on MY lock cylinder was long gone.
] At that point, your latch is free. Maneuver the linkage downward into the door and rotate the whole thing about 90º and it will come out the big bottom hole.
At that point, although I was willing to skip the lock, it was just sitting there looking at me. Dammit,
I will not take that! So it was off to the parts car to see if I could get a good one out. A bunch of hemming and hawing later, I was starting to wedge and pry on stuff when I stumbled onto the key (so to speak). One of the things you disconnected from the wiring loom goes to a gold-colored horseshoe-shaped thing at the lock. This is your door lock heater. It is also how the damn thing is held on. Push/pull/pry it forward and it releases the whole shebang.
Underneath it is a plate through which the lock protrudes. It doesn't come off easily unless you're also withdrawing the lock out the outside, so do that. It has a 'locked' pushbutton switch on it but you can leave the whole thing hanging.
With the locks out, I set to work getting them apart so I could rekey the unbroken one with the broken one's tumbler pins. It is definitely worth taking a junk lock apart some time just so you know how this works. It's not difficult to do. It's a little fiddly and slow is all.
On these cylinders, the first thing you need to do is pull an L-shaped flat pin out of the end. The lock spring tips rest on each side of it and it may have a little movement even as you first look at it. What you need to know is,
it is staked! Right in the middle, there's a stake that goes into a hole in the pin. So it doesn't come out easily - and you do not want to break the end of the cylinder! I managed it with brute force pushing and pulling with needle nose pliers. I suppose you might gently drill out the stake part to release it. You're on your own here.
Getting past that, there are two very small spring loaded detent balls (180º apart) that hold the end of the cylinder on. You can push in the cylinder itself or pull on the end cap, but the balls are there and you don't want to lose them. Fortunately, I'd found out on my broken one that they're there and only lost one in the process - so I had a spare. Once the end cap is off, you can put in the key (to hold the pins in place) and pull the cylinder core out.
Pay attention, take notes or pictures, or
do something to remember the parts orientation here. The lock link (with the spring on the link arm) is keyed to an arc on the end cap; the end cap is keyed to the cylinder at one point; the spring has only one place to be, tensioned against both sides of a lug; the cylinder core is also keyed to an arc. Play around with all of them so you see what goes where.
What you want to get to is the lock 'pins'. These are little teensy bits with a hole in the middle for the key to go through. If the cylinders are otherwise identical, you should be able to swap all the pins from one to the other and have the old key work in the replacement lock. E28 lock cylinders have
eleven pins. Six fitted from one side; five from the other. I meticulously took out the six and replaced them with the six from the broken cylinder. Then I turned it over and replaced the five with the other five -
in order! I inserted my key and twisted. It wouldn't move. I cleaned up a couple of sticky pins and tried again. Nothin'. Damn. After about 15 minutes, it dawned on me:
this door didn't come on this car! It was replaced by The Butcher! OF COURSE the lock wasn't the same! So now what?
Well, if by now you understand the theory of lock pins, you know what to do. You have to put the key into the cylinder and see which pins stick up too far. In order to turn, all the pins must be level with the surface of the cylinder. So you pull out the ones that stick out too far and try to replace them with ones that don't. If, like me, you're just not quite that patient or you aren't finding that you have the right size one on hand, you start pulling them out and leaving the spot open. Yes; it's a little less secure - but we're talking an E28 here. Thieves aren't exactly spending a lotta time on picking our door locks any more. So I ended up with six or seven (maybe eight) lock pins instead of the full complement. It worked real nice. Then, I got to spend some real 'quality time' getting those little balls back through the one hole (one in, then rotate 180º and repeat). I was surprised that I actually managed it. Secret tool: jeweler's screwdriver.
Installation, as they say, is the reverse of removal. First tip: be sure the window channel is in the right place. It can be bolted back offset so the rubber channel won't go into it. Don't do that. Second tip: for
all door latch handle removals, remember to tension the rod by sliding the latch forward before you tighten the screws. There is supposed to be a nylon grommet on it at each end. If not, you need to take up that slack or it will rattle in the door all the time. Of course, The Butcher had somehow lost these grommets.
When I was done, I happily opened, closed, locked, and unlocked my door. At the rear, it sat a couple of millimeters above the front edge of the rear door. No big deal, I thought. I'll just adjust the latch plate. Then I found one last legacy of The Butcher: two of the three screws have stripped heads and they won't come out even with an impact tool. Next installment: drilling out door latch screws.
Finished most of the new Megasquirt wiring harness. I'm still short a couple of fuel injector connectors which are on order, but hopefully I can put the (i) head on the super eta block in about a week and have it in the car in two. My professors will dictate the exact schedule of the transplant 
....more to come. Looking for lowering springs 
