When I did my power lock conversion I took some pictures of the assemblies. Hope these help.



Also, did you try unlocking and locking it with the key?

 

Also, did you try unlocking and locking it with the key?

Oh yeah. That's where I first discovered the problem. Even the key and the button together won't budge it.

Thanks for the awesome pics!:thumbsup:

Hmmm. I spy a spring there on the latch on the right. I wonder if that's my culprit.

 

I don't think I threw away my old locks but I may have, if you need some more pics I can go look for them.
What I did when I swapped them was just make sure you leave all the connections in the door and don't take any with the mechanism, pop the new one it and hook it up.
There is one connection that is VERY hard to get off, I'm pretty sure it's the one leading to the outside handle, I accidentally broke a couple handles removing them.

 

All of those linkage connections look difficult, as does finagling the latch through them and out of the door shell. I would consider unbolting the outside latch handle, but have had bad luck in the past, with the nuts seizing onto the studs and breaking the latch handle.

I guess my million dollar question here would be: Does that spring connect to (and "load") the the lever which attaches to that gold colored rod with the elongated attachment slot?

 

Spring is circled in red, and the apparent key to my problem is circled in blue. If the spring pulls the blue-circled part up, (as installed on driver's door) then I have found my problem, and can attempt repairing it inside the door.

 

Okay, so after examining mine.
Locked

Unlocked

I removed the spring and it does exactly as you describe that lever gets caught and doesn't return so you can't unlock it. The spring looks easy to replace.

 

Thanks, thanks, thanks, and thanks!
Those pictures are informational gold by themselves - especially with the plastic security cover removed. What a PITA that thing is...

But also your description of the "spring function" test confirms my suspicion by itself.

Now my biggest concern is accessing that damned spring. It looks like it's tucked up against the inner panel of the door shell, itself.

Hmmm, I'm at least half tempted to go out there right now, and look at it some more...

 

Well atleast you have good access to the door. :grin:
Grab a good flashlight and find the old spring. It may have just came off?
It's accessible without removing the plastic shield. A long needle nose will come in handy. Make sure that the mechanism isn't locked when you do it so you don't have to pull the spring farther.

 

Well atleast you have good access to the door. :grin:
Grab a good flashlight and find the old spring. It may have just came off?

OK, I snapped a couple more pics. I think I see where the spring is supposed to be, (but no spring) but I'll have to send this post so I can scroll up and compare to your pics.

 

I felt around for it at the bottom of the door, but no dice. I'm guessing that the unbroken end is still hooked to the latch. I initially googled the problem, and found some old threads here which clued me in. I think one of them mentioned the spring hanging on the latch. It is clean and dry in there, but my car gets a week's worth of door open/closes each night, so my bet is that the spring broke. One of the posters mentioned bending a new loop in the old spring and reusing it, while another bought a close-enough spring at the hardware store.

 

I'd buy a new one. I mean your old one broke once already, don't give it a chance to break again.

 

That is good advice. But I think I'm still going to go out there tonight and see if I can actually see that spring or its hooks, in there. I'll move that loose end of the window channel strip aside, and see if that creates a better line of sight.

And thanks again for the quick and concise help, as well as actually taking the part in hand and analyzing/testing it. That makes this a much higher quality thread. Also seem to remember from one of those old threads that correct new springs aren't available, and Toyota can only sell you a new latch. A spring supplier is the only hope.

You just can't beat the interwebs!

 

Yep, your spring is definitely missing. I can see the two points where it's suppose to be.

 

I replaced my driver's door lock because it would freeze up and would make a loud squeal when the power lock engaged(either to lock or unlock). I just disconnected the power to it for about 6 months before I just put in a new one.

 

OK, so I went out there today, and hopefully fixed this damned latch. As soon as I looked inside the door, I finally found the old spring. It had broken.

I removed the three screws which secure the latch, and then removed the rod coming from the lock cylinder, and snaked the lock button rod out of the door, and was able to get the latch assembly close enough to work on it.
I figured there was no hope of getting the spring on with my bare hand(s), and I was probably right. I was able to see that I needed some sort of hook apparatus - a wire hook would've been perfect. Seeing as how I had yet more coat hanger available, I fashioned an end into a hook, using pliers. (I should've snapped a pic of it, but didn't.)
The coat hanger hook worked!

Looks like it's stretched kind of too far,:dunno: but it's working. I tried cycling the latch using a screw driver in place of the loop, and it seemed slow and gummed up. So I sprayed some P.B. Blaster into the latch, and it freed up nicely, although that spring still looked too stretched.

Then I patched my vapor barrier:

The door card will probably not work. The larger armrest covers up the window crank stub. And the map pocket/speaker grill interfered with the aftermarket speakers which the PO installed. I removed those and found that the armrest bolt holes didn't line up. So I guess I'll see if I can find a proper early manual windows door card.

The latch and lock all work as they should, so hopefully this repair will hold up.

 

Glad to see you got it figured out.

 

Thanks for your help. You're the one who shed the most light on the mystery.

 

Ridiculous how much trouble a stupid spring causes! Thank you for documenting this. The pics are excellent.

 

Actually, I'm not sure if the latch is working correctly. The inside latch-handle has to be pushed back after opening the door. If I don't push it back, the door won't latch closed. The outside handle works like it should, and returns. Still, the lock seems to be working fine.

I know that my inside handle is broken, causing its return spring to not function, but I'm still thinking that the latch itself should be pulling the inside handle linkage back somewhat, with the inside handle's spring pulling the handle all of the way back.

With the inside handle off of the door, the bare linkage still has to be pushed back to the normal position.

Maybe I should just go ahead and pick up a new latch assembly from the yard?

 

Yea, I think your right. It should return. Maybe there is something blocking its way? I think the easiest solution would to just buy a working assembly.

 

The inside door handle on my passenger front doesn't have a spring and doesn't return. But the door latch/locking system works just fine. Sounds kinda like somethings not quite right in the latch/locking thing. I replaced mine(driver door lock) because the lock wouldn't work and got stuck a few times.

 

Ugh what a p.i.t.a. I'm gonna chime in with a vote to just replace the whole thing. I was able to replace my actuator fairly easily (and cheaply!) recently. The power locks stopped working on the passenger side so I got a junkyard replacement. I was messing with the window regulator that day so I removed it from the door before swapping the actuator. By removing the window regulator and the support bar, I had all kinds of room to swap the door mechanism. The annoying linkages are easy to deal with when there is enough room to stick your hands in there and still see what you are doing.

I knocked it out in under an hour and I was dealing with the window too so if it was just a dedicated actuator swap, I'd bet it'd be about 30 mins or so.

 

Took me about an hour but that's mostly trying to get the key cylinder back to the right position.

 

Welp, I think the spring broke again. I went to unlock it yesterday, and the key wouldn't turn. It worked today, though. I think I'll just get a whole new latch, next time I'm at U-Pull-&-Pray... Other than that, I'll roll 195,000 in the next day or two.

 

Noooooo! Dude! What the F?!

This is crazy. Do you think something is causing this?

 

Hopefully not my door sagging. It does drop a bit when it opens.

But for now, I just went ahead and replaced it.

It works nicely, but I think I didn't screw the lock button down far enough, so it feels like there might be a little resistance there. My telescoping magnet was just the thing for fishing the C-clip for the lock cylinder out of the door shell. Robert Frost is said to have spent the night in that house.


Then I installed my new blue door card.

Maybe I should clean that window?

It's nice having upholstery and an armrest again. It almost feels cramped now, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

 

Kinda curious about the house. . . Is it inhabited, and how old is it? Looks like a cool area. Can't say I'm the biggest fan of poetry, but I do appreciate it.

Hopefully this fixes your door troubles.

 

Oh, and the spring was intact. I guess something else was afflicting the latch assembly, and perhaps is what broke the original spring.

That house was built in 1924 according to the county auditor. From 1941 till 1972, it was owned by the dean of the college of Arts and Sciences, here at UC.
One of my friends grew up there and told me about Robert Frost. His parents still live there.
The building I live in was built in the 1850s, and in the late 19th century and early 20th century, was used as a school for girls.
After that, the land was parceled out and sold off, a street was extended, and the address here was changed to be on the extended street. Then, the immediately surrounding houses were built in the 1920s. This place has been apartments ever since. I snapped some pics of the power house building from when this place was a school, but they will have to wait, as smart phones are one of the biggest lies ever perpetrated against society.
The house on the other side of me was owned and occupied by the guy who designed or built Union Terminal. A former governor lived across the street from the house behind the one across the street from me.

If you've ever seen Caddyshack, when Chevy Chase is advising Danny Noonan about college, he mentions the "Kuder preference test." I always thought that was something he made up, but no. In the early 1930s, G. Fredric Kuder lived here. He wrote the Kuder Preference Record assessment test.
In the early '40s, the feature editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer lived here.
Ever heard of the old radio show, "Dimension X?" The guy who produced it lived here in the early '40s, too.

 

That much history is awesome! I love areas like that. It reminds me of where my Dad grew up. . . but now that city is pretty much abandoned. . or was until the city decided to bulldoze the majority of the vacant buildings. I've to go back to some of the spots with a metal detector to find coins.

 

Little tip for ya if you have an Android phone (not sure if this applies to iPhones, maybe?). Download Dropbox, and enable camera upload. Then install Dropbox on your computer. As soon as you connect to WiFi, whether at home or anywhere else, it automatically uploads all your newest photos you took to the cloud, and your PC will automatically download them. Super useful, I take pics, come home, and they're on my computer to upload to the forums.

 

I usually E-mail them to the address of my home computer, and then go from there. But this depends upon my POS android actually connecting to my POS modem...

As promised, the power house:

That Taurus is an SHO! And is emulating the building...