Hello all -

first off, I did search for info, but couldn't find an exact answer.

My power door locks have been acting strangely/not working -- that is, they unlock fine, but won't lock with the switches or the alarm. A while back, they would stop working for a week or two, and then magically start working again. That happened a few times over the past couple years, and now for the last couple months they will not lock (again, they unlock fine w/ the switches and factory alarm).

I pulled off the front door panels today, and tested for continuity from the wiring harness to the solenoid, everything was ok (figured the wires could fray from opening the door or something). I still need to check the wiring to the rear doors and the rear hatch, but I don't think that's the problem.

When i do hit the 'lock' switch on either of the front doors or the alarm, I do hear a very faint clicking noise, coming from the fusebox under the steering wheel. When I hit the unlock switch, there is a loud clicking noise from the same place (I assume the relay doing what its supposed to), but when unlocking I can barely hear it (i.e. need to have it right next to my ear, with no other noise around).

Does this sound like the relay (or whatever controller) is bad? Its getting kinda annoying to go around and manually lock 5 doors everytime I get out. Any suggestions on what to check besides this?

 

ruiz,

looks like you've done quite a bit to check the problem. did you alsocheck the green part that enables the actual "latching" of the door? look at my write up here:

http://4runners.org/articles/doorhandle/

Hope that helps.

Bob

 

Thanks bob - ya, that part works fine, I've installed quite a few stereo's before so I know about those. Funny though, my clip is just white, not that funky green color...

 

ruizs, my 1999 ltd power door lock started doing the same thing, it would unlock but it would not lock using the door panel switch or the remote alarm control. i started to remove the lower driver panel to access the control unit, which is located behind the instrument panel, to the right of the fuse box, and door lock started to work again. it been working fine for 3 weeks now. i think the control box has to be replace if this happens again.:pig:

 

yeah a couple of months back my 99 locks were dancing up and down while I was driving. and when I locked them they would unlock so after a little swearing they seemed to stop However just prior to this episode I had water from my roof drip into the switches- which I thought might have done it.
I have since installed the weathertech visors and dont really open the window too much after a rain. So far so good.

however since they were that fickle, I think I will have a problem such as yours oneday.
Good luck and post your results!

 

Thanks bosshog - that's good news for me. The previous owner bought it used from a dealer, and bought the 100k mile used car warranty from them. So now I'll go down and have them swap it out. I wanted to do all this checking in case I killed a wire when installing all my stereo crap, didn't want to get charged for their labor checking out the prob.