Choose you're pattern door locks carefully!

[Gary03]

A tale of woe!
This thing had been driving me nuts for weeks.
Long story short, bought a door lock (OSF) from ebay. (I had good luck with these pattern locks until now but from other sellers and not this one!!)
Straight after fitting, Car not recognising door was open, que re-locking, no interior light, now lights on buzzer etc etc. (the outer micro switch was not the problem here, confirmed by my test meter)
Lots of two-ing and throwing of emails backwards and forwards to seller. The questions got so stupid, I was half expecting him to ask me what the weather was like when i fitted the lock!

Today, i finally got around to stripping this "new" lock down to find the following.


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One of the cheap and nasty toy town micro switches was missing a tale. This resulted in the slider not even operating the switch, it was permanently in the 'open' position. The tale was not broken off as you could see that it was a machined end and not simply broken away. Not sure how they though it would work as it was in fresh air no matter what position the lock mechanism was in.
2 solder tracks on the PCB completely burnt through, the tracks are microscopically thin at any rate, not good enough to carry just a 1 amp load of the motor!
Look at the solder joints on the PCB, absolutely shocking. I would think that if this POS was ever to work, it wouldn't for long!
Lesson learnt for me.

[Crasher]

I see lots of these with problems, some where it is impossible to open the door. I keep telling people not to buy them but when you dangle a cheap price in front of most people they can't help themselves, that is until they have had a big bill to sort out a cheap part screwup.

[Gary03]

I see lots of these with problems, some where it is impossible to open the door. I keep telling people not to buy them but when you dangle a cheap price in front of most people they can't help themselves, that is until they have had a big bill to sort out a cheap part screwup.

I can well imagine.
How much is decent alternative Crasher?
The deal breaker for me is that its a few hundred quids worth of car so its not worth spending £200 on a genuine one. I have been lucky until now! Just fitted another pattern one, slightly more expensive than the above crap and it all works as it should.

[Crasher]

The only good ones are genuine at £194.92, the value of the car is immaterial when fixing it to be reliable from a garages point of view, they just can't afford to mess around as time is money, DIY is very different-you can afford to ponce around with £22 part from China but if the door sticks shut your world turns to **** and if you are a garage doing this that cheap part you made £20 profit on suddenly costs you four hours labour, a damaged door card and a sketch so you won't find many pro's stupid enough to do it.

[Gary03]

Cheers Crasher,
is that trade to you or retail?

[Crasher]

Retail, we (as with all trade) get around 5% discount before VAT.

[Gary03]

There really is no 'wiring work around' to be honest, only removing the puddle light bulb that you've already done. They're quite easy to take to bits, there's a couple of 'how too's' on YouTube that will give you confidence to have a go. Plenty seem to have the solder joints fail where the plug attaches, you'll see this inside if you take one to bits but of the 3 or 4 I've taken apart and not including the rubbish at the beginning of this thread that's gone straight in the bin, I've not seen the broken solder joint problem as yet! The cheap one I got to replace that one has been working as expected now for a couple of months.
This won't be the last time I strip one of these doors as my Mrs' B5.5 also doesn't know that the passenger door is open or closed - all original locks on 190'000 miles.
As an aside, I have also known these cars to have broken wires in the door shut area where the harness flexes.

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[Crasher]

And that is the difference between fixing your own car and being paid to fix someone else’s.

[beelzibus]

Which is why I rarely do paid work, it's just too much hassle. This was a freebie for a very close friend, I suspect he'll live with the dash indicator if there's no way round it.