Ford Focus (1998 - 2004) - 1999 - Doors deadlock when driving

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Sat 15 Dec 2007 23:27
1999 - Doors deadlock when driving - mikej
Hi,
I've got a 1999 V-reg 1.8i 5-door Zetec and it's recently started locking itself occasionally, whilst on the move !

This happened recently and because it was deadlocked, my wife could not unlock the driver's door from the inside but found that she could get out via the passenger door - this points towards the passenger door being faulty in some way, because presumably she shouldn't be able to get out of any of the doors when the car is deadlocked ?

My wife reckons that it's something to do with the cold weather, although this could be coincidence. You can sometimes here the locking mechanism 'twitch' whilst driving, but it doesn't actually lock.

Does anyone have any ideas what might cause the doors to all lock spontaneously like this, for no obvious reason ?

It's probably worth mentioning that the remote key has not worked for many years - I changed the battery (which made no difference) and have never got round to finding out the cause, as it locks and deadlocks manually without a problem.

Cheers.

Edited by Webmaster on 16/12/2007 at 12:50

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Sun 16 Dec 2007 00:24
Doors deadlock when driving - Tron
I had this on my partners Clio. If the same cause is a bad earth then the earth lead from chassis to engine may be the first point of looking?

Upon replacing (can you believe the AA located this fault and fixed it roadside?) all was and has been fine.

Other symptoms: Engine would just die. Alarm would go off when driving causing immobiliser to kick in, this killed engine (!!!!) when driving down the road, door locks would just keep locking/unlocking whilst both driving and parked - that was until the battery went flat and poor charging leading to yet another flat battery.

That or a loose connection/bad earth again on one of or even a faulty door lock activator motor?

Fault diagnostics on electrics = complete nightmare and it is nearly always something dead simple that is the cause - like a bad earth!

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