Side door can't open from inside

[grizz3000]

2001 Windstar LX

Apparently the driver side sliding door cannot open from the inside. The child lock IS NOT on. The handle one the outside seems 'loose' (pulls out with little resistance).

Where do I start? I hate to pull the inside panel without a plan of attack.

Thanks in advance!

[tripletdaddy]

Do you have any other problems with it like the electric door locks and the door not closed light, but all are definitley closed? That typically can be cured with a real good cleaning of the contacts on the pillar door jamb and the spring loaded pins. Your problem my be different. If the power door lock does not work on it, you may have a bad lock actuator or electricity is not getting to it. A bad actuator can prevent the door from opening I've heard The other possibility is the mechanism or the connecting rods are bent or disconnected, which may be consistent with the condition of the exterior door handle. Maybe someone, like a child or theif, pulled too hard on it or it was slim jimmed. Both possibilities, unfortunately, requiring doing surgery. Sorry. Good luck!

[grizz3000]

Okay, so three of the four doors can't be unlocked electrically via the drivers side control or the passenger control.

This means I have 3 bad door lock actuators right?

I can't open either sliding door from the inside. In fact the drivers-side sliding door can't open at all.

I tore open the passenger side sliding door tonight. I can visually see that pulling the handle doesn't do jack. The cable is attached to both ends (to handle and to latch mechanisim). It appears the 'lever' (A) that is pulled back when the handle is pulled doesn't push on the mechanism (B) that unlatches the door. See pic.

Since both doors are doing this, I'm assuming the kids have been yanking on them and may have bent something silly. (I don't see any evidence of bending though)

I would think 'A' shoud be down-in up against 'B', but it isn't. Hmmmm. Am I going on a wild goose chase?

[tripletdaddy]

I wish I have personal experience with your problem that I can share, just from other vehicles. But, nevertheless, I'm not ready to conclude your door lock actuators are bad. Can you listen for them and hear them? They may not be able to do anything with all the bending and stretching that may have occurred. I would only be convinced of their defectiveness by seeing them not work and testing that power is getting to them. They are a solenoid and can go bad, especially when trying to move something they can't, like a bent lock mechanism. That seems to be consistent with the fact you can't open it manually, right? I'd guess that the cable that pulls part A into part B has been stretched and won't pull them far enough to unlock the door. Is that what you see happen when you operate it? Are you sure that B when moved far enough will unlock it? Sometimes when we don't know what the lock mechanism should look like, we can't tell if it is bent. I've had that happen and had to study and play with it to figure out what isn't allowing it to work. I seem to remember someone saying the locks couldn't be operated manually because of a bad lock actuator on a Taurus, which was in the Taurus Forum. If you haven't, you should do a search on this. Good luck.

[tripletdaddy]

Did you make sure the electrical contacts and the spring loaded pins on the sliding door and jamb are clean, as they would not allow the electric door locks to work? The door open light may come on with the door closed, but not necessarily if dirty.

[grizz3000]

I'm approaching this in two phases.

First, I need to get the door to open from the inside handle. I sure want the kids to be able to get out if something happened.

Second, get the door to unlock via the actuator.

I've cleaned the contacts until I was blue in the face before even starting the thread. The first symptom was a bad actuator, then the "can't open from inside" symptom appeared.

[duke350]

I've had more then one pass though me where the regulator would be "dry". A bit of WD-40 or 556 on it to clean it off and some grease after it was working fixed the problem. Not saying this is your problem, but it sure wouldn't hurt to check it out, and is fairly inexpensive. On the first one I noticed that it would open, but once locked it wouldn't unlock, even manually. Everything just felt "loose".

[so2315]

I am going through this right now with mine. 1St of all, are these power sliding doors? Mine are and there is another actuator that operates the latch. For a new latch actuator and door lock actuator it is $400 installed from my dealer.
The latch actuator is part # 5F2Z17264A00C and is $180. Apparently this has been revised several times.
I was going to tackle this myself, but with all of the clips and cables I figured I didn't want the headache and my time is worth something also.