W123 door latch
 

My door is becoming unfit to close. It sometimes take 4-5 slams, as hard as physically able, to close.

I found an old thread somewhere that claimed that if you look under the striker for a small plastic nub, and it is missing, the door will be difficult to close. One fix was to install a small screw in the resulting hole where the missing nub was. Another claimed you could buy replacement nubs on ebay, but as usual there was no specific link.

Now for the problem; three strikers are missing the nubs and they close fine. The only door with the nub intact, in fact the entire striker appears to be a new replacement, is the drivers door which wont close.

So do I replace the seemingly new striker or does the situation indicate some other cause?

Thanks

I can't say exactly what the problem is, but can give you something to think about. I had a similar problem a few years ago with the right (passenger side) front door on my car.

A body shop was repairing a dent in the door, and I had told them about the problem with closing the door., which was already present before the door had been dented. They tried adjusting the door catch/striker and so on, and told me that the latch assembly was broken. It required replacing the latch assembly. They got a replacement from a junkyard. It's been working fine since.

I had this problem on my SDL. You had to slam the holy $*&t out of the driver's door to get it to latch. Replaced the door striker, and you merely have to give it a gentle push. If it grabs the striker, it latches 1st time, every time.

Has similiar problem,it was the "hinge' little weight metal band ,that kept door from closing all the way