Photo 1: at some point, your careful wiggling and lifting of the door panel will pay off, and the card will come free. However, you still have to reach behind it, between the panel and the metal of the door, to detach a rod that is hooked into the interior pull handle that opens the door. This is a poor photo, but it will be easy to see what is needed once the panel comes free. I found that having the window down made it easier to reach in behind, by the way.

Photo 2: you will need to detach the two rods that connect up to the lock assembly. One is the other end of the interior pull handle rod, and the other comes from the vacuum actuator for automatic locking. The door pull handle rod is just a simple hook; pop it out of the guide in the middle of the door and then you can unhook it. The locking rod is held to the lock lever by a little white plastic keeper; you just pop the rod end out toward you to detach it, leaving the keeper in place.

Photo 3: the lock itself is held in place by three heavy duty Phillips head bolts. I found that they were quite tight, and so I put a large size screwdriver insert into a 1/4" socket. This made it quite easy to apply leverage, and the bolts came out easily then.

Once the lock is free, you have to disengage it from the outside handle. Reach up in there and you will find that when the exterior handle is pulled outward it pulls a lever that pivots at the bottom of the lock mechanism in the door. I think that I disengaged that inner lever by first pulling the outside handle of the door, and then whole mechanism was able to move down and out of the door.

Once I had my mechanism out, I cleaned it up with brake cleaner, and then applied a drop of light oil to all the pivot points. For some of the interior pivots I used a spray lubricant applied via a small red tube (not WD-40, rather something that actually sticks around and lubricates). Put it back in, and now the vacuum actuated door locking works again! When I first had it out, I could not even move the locking lever with the little white plastic keeper!

Reassembly is the reverse of disassembly, as they say. Just be sure to hook the rod into the pocket of the interior pull handle before you slide the card down into place - you really can't do it once the panel is attached. Don't ask me how I know! I hope that this helps someone in the future!

Kurt

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- '79 240D - engine swap complete! Engine broken in! 28-31 mpg! Lovin' the ride!
- '86 190D (W201-126) - 2.5 NA engine, 5 speed, cloth interior, manual climate controls, 33-34 mpg (sold to forum member).