Wife is out of town and she tore up 2 things on the GL. First the rear hatch
latch failed. Motor tried to suck in the door but it just doesn’t latch. This
must be a common failure as new Chinese ones are available for less than $40
all over eBay. The new dealer part is $300+ IIRC. Next thing was she said she
heard a loud noise and now car won’t go over 20. That was the AAA debacle.
First up fix the issue that caused it to be towed home. I guess the loud noise
was the intercooler hose popping off. The 642 behaves very strangely, surges,
and barely moves with the hose off. Fixed that.
Next up, the rear hatch. That job took all of 15 minutes. The cheap Chinese
latch looked identical to the one that came off the car. Will see how long it
lasts. There are no tools required to remove all the trim around the back hatch
and the rear inside panel. Everything is just plastic and held in with clips,
just pops loose with your hands but be careful not to break anything. That now
works great.
Next project was the failed drivers door lock actuator. These are not like the
old days where you have a latch assembly and a separate actuator. It’s all one
unit. This has not been working for a year so I decided to tackle the job.
Pulled the one off one of the parts cars in the back 40. On the GL you have to
pull the window regulator which is actually the entire inside panel of the
door. There are a bunch of torx screws along the edge and the entire window
regulator assembly gets pulled out along with the latch assembly all as 1 unit.
The door latch is mounted to the window regulator.
With the window regulator out, the entire center of the inner door is wide
open. Within, there is a flimsy piece of sheet metal that runs across the door
that I guess is supposed to reenforce it. It’s not like the big thing metal bar
in the older cars such as 123, 126 etc. Pic attached showing this as well as
the window regulator.
Typically you just swap the whole lock assembly which best I can describe has 2
parts. It’s like a puzzle figuring it all out the first time. On my car it has
keyless go, and the parts car does not so I could not simply swap the whole
assembly over because there is an extra harness that that donor part does not
have. I had to separate the core door latch assembly from the other plastic
piece that contains parts for the outside door handle. There is a cable that
runs from the secondary assembly that when the outside door handle is pulled,
it opens the latch. Had to do a little disassembly of this part to unhook the
cable, then transfer it to the good latch out of the parts car.
After reinstalling the now complete latch assembly onto the window regulator,
it was now time to install the whole mess back in the door. You have to get it
somewhat into place and then working thru the small holes where the outside
door handle goes, fish the latch assembly into place then secured it with
screws. Put everything back together and now the wife will not have to manually
lock the drivers door.
I will say after figuring out how the GL door panel comes off, there are only 2
actual screws holding it in place, remove those and the rest is just clips.
Comes off and goes back on super easy.
Sent from my iPhone
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