Advice needed - Here is the sequence: When exiting our X308 cars after driving, and putting the shifter in park, and shutting off the ignition, one normally pulls the inside door handle to exit, the doors then all unlock, and the driver door then unlatches and opens. Not so on my car. What is not happening are the doors unlocking, and with the locks all still locked, the door cannot be opened. (engine off at this point) I know the actuator is working, because it works by pressing the door unlock button on the center console (engine running), and it works locking/unlocking via the remote.

I know the cable connected to the inside door handle pulls on the door latch lever, but there must be a switch that is supposed to be in turn mechanically actuated that causes all of the actuators to function and the doors to unlock. My question is where is that switch and how do I get to it for adjustment or replacement? I am guessing that I will need to remove the door latch - so my next question is how do I get that out? It comes loose by removing the mounting screws, but I can't seem to get it out of the door?? Does anyone know the secret or have any prior experience with this?

Many thanks in advance!

 

smt, are you looking for a "How-To" remove the door panel?

 

I think you have disturbed the microswitch on the door latch (part 1) shown in the schematic below

The inside handle cable linkage as well as the other opening mechanisms operate a switch that is part of the latch assembly. I think you should be able to manually test with the panel off to see if by pulling on the cable you can hear the switch operate. If you are lucky, you may have a cable that is going to the dark side and isn't able to rotate the linkage enough to operate the switch

Elsewhere on the forum there are posts on successes with replacing faulty microswitches (I have replaced units on the trunk latch and brake switch successfully and found what I needed on Digi-Key).

 

Got to thinking of this more as, sods luck, I found the ft passenger door wouldn't open yesterday just after I repaired the drivers door, so I've just been looking at what caused the problem. Problem was it wouldn't reliably open the door from the inside handle (in retrospect it was likely going bad for a long time and we hadn't noticed that the action of the door handle had changed as the car gets little use these days so there was no point of reference to show things were changing until it stopped working).

This time it was the cable that was bad. There is a collar that sits on the cable at the latch end of the cable that I found had disintegrated. The crimp at the end of the cable sits against it and forms the surface the latch arm acts against as you pull the interior handle. The collar is nylon / plastic (not sure what it was as it was in bad shape). Even though the collar is only 1-2 mm thick where it sits against the cable crimp, this was enough for the door handle to stop working. There are lots of posts on this problem on the forum....

To your issue - After pulling everything apart to see how it works, it seems that all the linkages for door operation (inside handle, outside handle and manual door lock plunger) all operate the same mechanical spring in the latch that affects door opening and locking. In turn, all of them connect electrically to the microswitch.

I think that this means, in your case, as the fob operates the lock that your microswitch is good. A final test is that if you can unlock the door via the plunger, then this points to the problem being with the cable (both front doors are similar as far as I can tell).

As FYI, I tried to fix a temp solution to replace the collar, but gave up and have just ordered a new cable from Amazon. I think that may be the solution you will have to follow as well

 

same problem here . I click the lock button before opening the driver door

 

sar89VDP -

Currently if the ignition is switched off I the door lock plunger will not pull up which I thought was strange. I also don't understand why when shifting into park the door lock actuators don't all unlock the doors? Maybe they are supposed to, and that is part of the problem? Truth be known, I am not a fan of the doors all locking when going into gear anyway; if I could disable that "feature" I would certainly do it.
Thank you for your input - very appreciated.

 

In my car (owned since bought off lease in 99) with ignition off, doors stay locked until an inside front door (either side) handle is partly pulled (to the "1st stop"), the central lock button is pushed, the plunger is lifted or (with key out of ignition) fob is used. All 4 of mine stay locked unless unlocked this way & all act together (If unlocking with Fob, it is a 2 step process - front 1st push, rear 2nd push).

The rear passengers can only unlock by lifting the plunger, the handle does not work if doors are locked - Unlocking also applies only to their door and also sets the alarm off if they then try to open the door using the handle and neither front door is unlocked. This was a real pain when I 1st had the car as my kids were small and they were always setting off the alarm, but at least I knew they couldn't escape.....

The plunger is always operable (lock and unlock) on all doors, but only the plungers on the front doors unlock all doors. The front plunger is always operable - key in or not and both front doors do a full unlock (all doors) when operated.

When the inside door handle is pulled to the 1st stop (unlock) position, the link arm to the plunger also operates, so I assume that both use the same contacts to initiate unlocking


I think this is that factory default setting as my car came this way & expect a dealer could alter this with their scan tool, but don't know for a fact. I always figured this was the default so the British PM couldn't be car jacked at a stop
(I do know that a dealer can change the ways lights operate multiple ways as I needed to get daytime running lights to license in Canada and that was done in s/w, with a lot of options to choose from).

The attached pics show the attachment point for the plunger on the latch. This arm is connected to the opening spring (out of site inside the latch assembly), together with the internal handle cable that can be seen behind it. The linkage arm from he outside handle also connects to the spring, but is out of site behind the latch assembly.





Ft Passenger Latch Assembly

Front Passenger Latch assembly showing link attachment for locking plunger and cable from interior door

 

Just on a whim: try a hard reset of the battery. Touch the negative cable to the positive post on the battery. Wait a few minutes. Put the negative cable back on, tighten it. And see if it is fixed.

 

Same problem with my car. I just ordered a new cable for mine off Ebay, there may be other things wrong, but the cable was definitely bad.

 

Have posted earlier in this thread about the front passenger door not opening using the inside handle on my 98, so this post closes the loop on the repair.

The new cable arrived this week (was a URO part).

Installed it and now all is OK.

Wanted to share to show the cause of the failure - in the attached photo the collar that the latch end cable termination pulls against can be seen. It is nylon and the end that the cable termination rides against had disintegrated. Otherwise, the old cable was fine. This collar sits (very tightly) in a slot on the latch mechanism and is the point the cable crimp rides against when the door is opened. Just by losing the small portion of collar that the cable pulls against was enough that the handle would unlock but not open the door.

Replacement was about as difficult as changing a brake or shift cable on a bicycle. I found that I needed to remove the latch from the door to seat the collar properly as the collar is a tight friction fit in the cutout and I couldn't get it to seat fully when still on the car. The latch comes off with the removal of 3 Torx screws that hold it in place. To fully remove it from the car, you must also move the window guide to make room. It fastens with a single Torx screw at the bottom that holds it in place. The arm that connects to the outside door handle must also be removed (I found it easiest to remove the handle to disconnect it (2x7mm bolts and then rotate to unclip the latch arm from the handle). Otherwise, the most difficult / time consuming part of the job is taking the door panel off.

Total job, going slow, took ~2 hours. Now that I know what the job is about, doing another door would take ~ 1 hour.

Part cost ~35 USD delivered from Amazon (I ordered it from the States as the part wasn't listed on Amazon.ca and the eBay listings were also all US, but cost more shipped to Canada). The nearest dealer is a couple of hours away, so I never checked the price from them as I wasn't going to be travelling that way for a while but as FYI my last few parts (all engine bits) have been cheaper from the dealer than I have found online.


Latch end of Cable showing failed collar

View of the entire cable

 

Sar98vdp,
Thank you for this informative post with great pictures. I suspect the problem I had all along was that the nylon collar was not seated well in the latch arm recess. Of course I found this out AFTER going to the junkyard and buying a replacement latch assembly because I thought the microswitch was bad. What I have learned here is that when replacing the cable, everything in this assembly is precisely related must go back exactly as Jaguar intended which is not obvious when looking at the broken pieces.

Anyone in need of a used driver door latch?