The soft closing on the driver's door stopped working, I could hear the motor doing its thing but it does not spin the latch, I tried doing it manually while the door is open and yes, I could hear it but I don't see the latch turning automatically while if i do it on the passenger's side I see the latch continuing it's way electronically. It's like the connection between the motor and latch is broken.

Should I attempt to disassemble the door and see what's up or what do you guys think?


I guess I caused it to fail because a few days ago my car was parked in the sun and what I do sometimes is that I open and swing the door with another window open to push the hot air out and at some point the door latched and I quickly yanked it open, I heard a click so probably that was when the soft close motor got disconnected from the latch or something...

2016 XJ L 3.0SC

 

Your in luck my friend! Not common but would have been found if you did some searches?
I also heard a soft "pop" when mine broke.

I went thru this and you have a broken plastic gear inside what's called the suction motor. Now the great thing is soft close is also used on the LR side of the company and apparently this failure is fairly common over there.
Here is my repair thread and do consider getting the metal after market part. It's far stronger than the plastic one.
Soft Door Close Repair

I could not find the metal versions but finally used the right search term.
It's a "Suction Motor Gear". About $25 for the replacement metal gear. If your not interested in that just replace the suction motor assembly itself.
Suction Motor Replacement Gear
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side question, would it be at all beneficial to 'hard close' the doors more often than not in effort to reduce wear on the soft close mechanism? or does that have no impact on it

 

Can't say but that does make sense since the drivers door gets all the use. That's the only door I have seen that breaks the plastic gear. Plus even then it so rare that it's almost not mentioned on the XJ forum at all. Tons of broken gears on LR's maybe because there are so many more of them on the road?

When mine broke it took some time searching to figure out exactly what went wrong. I had the standard symptom. The door does not soft close but you can hear the motor running inside the door.
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