Hi All,

I'm a longtime lurker / first time poster. I have a 2003 XJR that's been 'in the family' for a while - it was my wife's car for a year, a garage queen for several years, then was loaned to my dad for a year, and now will finally become my daily driver.

In any case, I'm wondering if anyone can help me diagnose what's going on with the door locks. When I hit the door lock / unlock button on the keyfob or even from within the car I get the 'click' sound and I see the door locks 'twitch' as if they want to go down but encounter too much resistance and ultimately just give up. I am able to lock / unlock all door locks manually from the inside and outside using the key, but I have noticed that the driver's side door (and possibly the passenger door too) seems to have a fair bit of resistance when I turn the key. When the problem first started happening there was a lot more resistance (had to really crank it to open with the key), and with regular use it's gotten easier to turn the key but it's still more effort than other cars (I think).

The truth is, I haven't actually used a key to unlock a car door in ages. This all started happening when my dad (he's old) decided he was going to use the key instead of the keyfob to unlock the car doors. I don't know if he broke something in the process or if this was just a problem that was waiting to happen.

Anyone ever experience this before or have any ideas as to what it might be?

 

First thing is check the battery. It might be the battery doesn't have enough juice to put those locks down.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll check it out but I really doubt it's the battery since we just replaced it about a month ago when the alternator failed. The door lock issue started way before that.

I'm wondering if the lock mechanism itself just be gunked up with something? What I can't wrap my head around is that none of the locks open / close electronically so the issue seems to be centralized in that respect.

 

Try a hard reset of the battery

 

Thanks! I'll give this a shot over the weekend. In 4 years of owning the car I don't believe I've ever done a 'hard battery reset' so hopefully that's all it is. Just need to remember where I put that radio security code...

 

If none of the suggestions work then pulling the door cars and having a look at the lock rods and actuator, there's also a plastic cup that breaks that the rod fits in to check. Something sounds stretched/bust.

 

So I tried the battery hard reset but it didn't work. Luckily as I was looking through the service manual I learned that there are actually 2 fuse boxes underneath the rear seats and of course one of those fuses is for the power door locks actuator! It was burned out (of course) and swapping it got my door locks working again. Now the problem is I'm noticing that all door locks work except for the rear passenger door lock. It doesn't seem to go up and down with the rest of them. I'm guessing perhaps there's something wrong with that lock which may have cause the fuse to burn out in the first place.