Disco 2 Discovery II (TD5) 2004 - Rear Door won't open from inside, WILL open from outside and unlocks fine!

Hello to all



I've googled this, and cannot find a solution or indeed another post that's the same - so sorry if I've missed it.



Our rear door has only ever opened from the outside. It opens fine from the outside. It also unlocks / locks with the central locking without problem.



I've just had to replace the rear windscreen wiper motor and arm, so thought I'd see if I could cure whilst the rear door card was off. I can see that the inner handle cable is connected to the latch. When I pull the handle, I can feel the cable being pulled and can hear that the latch is being "adjusted" internally. (BTW - I can confirm that the child lock is off - I have tried wriggling the child lock on/off, and when it's on, I can hear that the internal handle definitely does less to the latch - which is what I would presume it should do).



Has anyone else had this? It's not the end of the world, but it does mean that passengers in the dicky seats cannot let themselves out of the car which is a little annoying. As I say, can find plenty of threads about the rear door either not unlocking or not being able to be opened from the outside, but not this issue. The doors still apart, so was going to unbolt the latch and c/l actuator and remove to see if there's something really obvious that I can't see whilst it's all in place inside the door.



Would be dead handy if there's a common fix for this particular niggle.



Many thanks for any pointers

I am in the process of rebuilding the innards of my D1 rear door after some paintwork and suggest that you check that the child lock is fitted correctly. On the D1, it's a very simple plastic latch that engages in a hole in an arm that comes down from the lock assembly. If it's been removed at some stage and not refitted correctly into the hole in the arm, you will have the problem that you describe. No need to ask how I know!

Silverbeard50 said:

I am in the process of rebuilding the innards of my D1 rear door after some paintwork and suggest that you check that the child lock is fitted correctly. On the D1, it's a very simple plastic latch that engages in a hole in an arm that comes down from the lock assembly. If it's been removed at some stage and not refitted correctly into the hole in the arm, you will have the problem that you describe. No need to ask how I know!

Click to expand...

Excellent suggestion - thanks Silverbeard. I don't suppose you have, or could take a picture of how the child-lock should look when it's correctly fitted or positioned do you? I can see, from the number of broken door card clips that were still poking into the door frame and the missing plastic sheeting from the lock area of the door, that someone's been inside the rear door before now - so this could well be a possibility as the solution. Given that whoever removed the plastic sheeting from the lock area had clearly done it in a careless way, and has effectively just ripped it off and not even bothered to replace it, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find that the lock hadn't been put back into place with any care either!

Thanks again

In the early model locks the childproof lock lever has a design flaw that causes it to stick when the lock mechanism gets dusty.

From inside the vehicle, slipping a dinner knife between the door and door-post (work it past the rubber door seal) to tickle the childproof lock lever whilst operating the inside handle usually gets the door open. Once open, the lock can be removed and the over-centre spring on the child-proof lock lever that holds it in the open or closed position can be removed to prevent future problems.
Its not the lever itself that sticks, rather it is the part of the mechanism where the other end of the spring locates because the spring pushes it at an angle. Having the spring removed doesn't cause any problems.

Later locks used a much smaller spring (and perhaps other changes) and does not get stuck.

When you've sorted it -Use "INOX" lube for locks, non sticky and doesn't dry out. So won't collect dust and carp.

SOLVED!

I got a suggestion on a another forum that it might be a stretched cable - sure enough, it was.

I removed the latch/actuator unit and once this was free of the door, I was able to pull the inner door lever cable further than you can when it's all installed. The door latch clicked open, and I was able to see, that the first 25% or so of the movement of the inner door handle was pretty slack. When you pulled the inner door handle as far as it would go whilst it was in place, and then compared it to how far it needed to be pulled to release the latch - there was a noticeable difference.

I could then see that the cable itself had fixed anchors on either end, and there was no scope or ability to adjust the tension in the cable at all. I needed to fabricate something to take up the excess slack from the stretch, and the only way that I could see that this could be done, is where the outer cable housing enters the small black plastic stop that clips into the door, just short of the inner door handle itself.

As a cyclist, I had tons of outer gear and brake housing in the garage, so I snipped off a very short (about 1/2 cm) of black cable housing. The only problem with this is that the inner door cable is fixed, and there's no way to get the housing over the inner cable, so using some cable cutters, snipped along the long side of the short slice of cable outer to open it out. What this actually did was to disintegrate it into multiple individual parts - however, I used the individual shards and then used the black plastic cable housing to keep it in place on top of the inner cable, then stuffed the lot into the black plastic grommet that sits beside the inner door handle itself. I needed to pull the cable through in order to get it into the black plastic grommet/stop so this definitely took up the slack. Once the cable had been hooked back into the door handle, and the main latch re-fitted back into the door, shut the latch with a screwdriver and hey presto - she's working from both the inner and outer door handles. Result. It's hard to explain exactly, but see the three pics I've uploaded below for how the mod was created and how it ended up in the cable stop/grommet.

So, she's all working again now - rear tailgate working exactly as it should be. Thanks for the thread responses - it defo put me on the right track.

Video test of the inner and outer door handles:

Nice