1997 door actuators?

How do you go about installing these on the front doors? any help would be very appreciated.

I just saw this thread...did you figure it out? There was a very helpful article I found ..here it is....

So I had the same problem that a lot of people are expriencing, the drivers side
door not unlocking with the power locks/keyless entry. Here is a writeup of the fix
I did. Start by removing the door panel. This is rather easy. There are two 8mm bolts
along the bottom edge. And there is a philips screw hidden behind a small removable
plastic cover right by the door handle and door lock. Pop the cover, remove the
screw and then if you look closely you will see that the screw is actually holding
in a piece of plastic that can separate from the rest of the door. The outline of
this plastic pieve will basically circle the depressed area where the door handle
and lock are. Pull this out. The door is now ready to come off. Simply slide the
door panel up and once its free you can pull it out. There will be three wire
harnesses. To get these off I insert small flat head screw drivers to unhook the
latches that hold the harness's together. You will see a large piece of flexible
plastic covering the door. This is held in place by two plastics peices at the top
right and left corners and by some sort of black goo. Pop out the plastic peices
with a screwdriver and peel the plastic back. Do not get the goo on clothing it
won't come off. After the plastic piece is removed you should notice an auxillary
piece of metal that is attached to the rest of the door with two screws. One of the
screws is right by the door lock. This piece should be rusty in color. Remove the
screws and remove this piece.
You can now look inside and maybe see the door latch/lock assembly. There are 6
things connected to this (all of which must be disconnected to get the assembly
out. The first two are the interior door handle and lock switch connecting rods.
The next two are the exterior door handle and lock switch connecting rods. Plus
there are two wiring harness's. To get things going you need to remove the three
Torx screws that hold the assembly in. These are on the outside of the door. Once
these are removed the whole assembly is kind of free to move around inside. I first
started by removing the metal rod connector for the interior door lock at the door
lock switch itself. This requires kind of some weird twisting and pulling/pushing
with some pliers. Do not be afraid to bend the rod a little it will bend back, but
don't break the thing. Do the same for the door handle. Now that both of these rods
are removed you can really move the assembly around and you should be able to pull
it close enough to completley remove the interior door handle/lock rods from the
assembly. You also at this point should be able to remove the wire harnesses. Four
down, two to go. If you shine a flash light in you will see that there are two rods
left. These we will leave connected to there respective handles, but they need to
be disconnected from the assembly. If you look closely you should be able to see
one of the rods is connected to a grey piece of plastic and it looks like it is
screwed in. Leave this for last. Instead look at the other rod. It is attached like
the previous rods were, minus the nasty bends on the end to hold it on the lock
assembly. Using a flat head screw driver or some pliers you should be able to pry
this one directly out. Now the only thing left is the exterior door handle rod. As
I said it looks like it is screwed in and in fact it is. I actually just rotated
the whole lock assembly until that rod disconnected. I then removed the assembly.
Once the assembly is out you will notice that the grey piece of plastic is actually
a clip which theoretically could have been unclipped to remove the last rod,
however its really easy to break these things if your not careful so I recommend
unscrewing it.
Now that the thing is out you can actually plug it back into the harness and start
hitting the power lock button and you will see immediatly what is wrong. The
actuator is simply an arm that moves up to lock and down to unlock. Unfortuantly it
couples to the lock assembly by seating in a small white piece of rubber. Well over
time the rubber broke thus causing your unlock problem. However when locking the
actuator arm is just pushing down on the lock assembly which is why it still locks.
At this point you have three options:
1. Buy one of those assemblys. It will run you about $150 at a dealership, or if
you go online to a place like GM parts direct after shipping you maybe able to get
it for around 100.


this was found on another thread