2004 Locked Sliding Door

My driver's side power sliding door is stuck in the locked position. No amount of manual or electric attempts to lock and unlock helps.

As anyone with kids knows, you head to the vehicle, you press the unlock on the remote which gets the driver's side door and then the second time unlocks the rest of the doors. Invariably, one of the kids tries opening a door while you're unlocking it. It gets stuck. In the past, whether my Venture, my Buick Regal or my Pontial Grand Prix, I relock the doors and unlock them again and everything is fine.

However, on my Venture, that didn't work one day and I had to go one step further. I had to turn the vehicle off and back on before the electric unlock would work on that sliding door.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, once again I had a boy too eager to get in the van (snowy, cooooooooooooooooold day). However, this time, nothing I do will unlock this door. Manual, electric, vehicle off & back on, electric again. Nothing.

The inside lock is in the down, locked position and I can't pull it up to unlock it. At least I refuse to pull up any harder than I am right now for fear of REALLY breaking something. Do I need to pull the inner panel off and get into the lock mechanism? Is there something simple I can do to get this thing unlocked and hopefully the mechanism working again?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Bob

Is there a key on the outside of this door, where you can manually unlock the door?

No. The only outside key hole is on the driver's door. Neither the passenger door nor the sliding doors have key holes.

I have had this problem repeatedly until I worked on the door latch mechanism (lubed it inside).
Not suprisingly it was my kids that figured out how to solve it. Have the youngsters 'jiggle' the lock button inside the sliding door. I know its stuck in the down position, but you can lift it (normally until the power lock senses you and kicks it up) a bit and release it again.
What they do is open the driver's door and reach inside with one hand to the unlock button on the door, then with the other hand pull out on the outside handle. Do this one hand at a time--don't move both at once.
It allways took me quite a long time to get this proceedure to work (like 10 minutes of fooling around) but the kids got it down to a minute or less. Got to be so simple for them I didn't bother fixing it until the summer weather came around.

You have nothing else to loose--explain it to the kids and let them have at it!

I had an 88 Astro that the drivers door locked up like that (while I was in the drivers seat.) I had to tear into the door and activate the mechanism manually from inside the door. I then disassembled the lock mechanism and there was a piece of metal that was bent (part of the mechanism), I cleaned it up real good and lubed it with some white lithium grease before I put it back together, has worked good ever since. That being said, I think our Venture mechanisms are of the plastic variety (at least part of them) so be careful!!!! Good luck! :-)