Kurt, I've been told that the key must be inserted into the lock and turned part way before the lock cylinder can be removed. Obviously that won't be possible in a junkyard. I've never tried it myself and don't know what is necessary.

Once you have the lock cylinder removed, the handle will disconnect from the inside portion. You can then remove the screws and take the mounting bracket for the handle off of the inside of the door. This is shown in section 3 of my original post.

Jeremy

Thank you, Jeremy. I went back to the junk yard, determined to unravel the mystery. Here is what I found, at least for the W201:

There are the three Torx bolts that hold the latch; you access those on the edge of the door and remove them. Now the latch is hanging in there by the lock cylinder shaft. There is also an inset Allen set screw accessible above those bolts, at the level of the cylinder. I think it was a 3mm. Once I removed that the cylinder was loosened, but still tethered to the latching assembly. After some more fiddling I found that if I rotated the outside portion of the lock cylinder assembly 90 degrees it slipped out of the latching assembly, and voila! The cylinder assembly could be withdrawn, as well as the latching assembly removed. It is possible that turning the key would have made the rotation of the cylinder body unnecessary; I think my method probably requires that the latch assembly be unbolted so that you gain enough 'play' for the rotation.

Cheers,

Kurt

Good job, Kurt, thanks for the feedback.

Yep that is how you have to play it in a junkyard without the key. The cylinder has a "T" shaped piece that hooks into the mechanism.

If you are removing the lock the normal way, with the key, you just undo the allen screw, put the key in, rotate 90 deg, and out it comes.

If you don't have the key then you will have to rotate the whole mechanism enough to free it from the cylinder T piece. The only way you can do that is to remove the whole locking mechanism.