Update:

My wife reported more unusual behavior from her door locks this morning. After she pulled into the driveway, stopped in her normal parking spot, put the shift lever in "Park", shut off the ignition switch and removed her key, her drivers door interior handle would not open the door until the steering wheel had completed its automatic upward travel and the radio antenna had completed its retraction into the rear quarter panel. She swears that neither of those automatic actions had to be completed before she could open her drivers door in the past....

Any guesses as to what is going on with these door locks? Is the drivers door latch assembly microswitch still the primary suspect or are there other potential suspects in play now?

 

What now Coach?
I refer this question to the Master's.
WOW.

 

Yeah Wayne, I hope Brutal or NBCat or one of the other master techs will chime in here and give us some direction. We can take the time and trouble to replace the drivers door latch assembly microswitch with the new one I ordered last month but right now we have no assurance that it will solve the overall door handle problem. Jan is getting frustrated and I cannot blame her. She does not want to get trapped inside her car, unable to get out because the door handles finally decide to quit working altogether....

 

From memory, you have one of those JLR scan tools. I would start there, and listen to what the car has to say. Hopefully, something specific and helpful comes up.

For escaping the car, could she roll the window down and use the external handle as a last resort?

 

My iCarsoft i930 scanner has proven to be useless for this issue. I tried it when the problem first arose in early August, then tried it again this past weekend. All the modules that it can successfully read are reported as 100% functional....

 

In post #2 of this thread, redpoptop reports that he had a similar problem which seemed to be caused by the infamous sticking ignition metal key flap refusing to close. My question is this: How far does a normally-operating metal key flap close on these cars? Halfway? Three quarters of the way? All the way? I would estimate that the key flap in my wife's XK8 has always closed between halfway and three quarters of the way. In the past, me lubing it has never made any difference in closing that gap. Perhaps I am indeed dealing with a key flap problem. So when you folks get the chance, please check your own key flap gaps and let me know where they stand. Thanks....

 

Jon - on my 2000 - the key flap closes about 3/4 - anything less and I get a chime letting me know something is amiss.

 

From memory, the steering column only moves back up and out of the way if that switch is operated, i.e. the key is completely off the barrel...

 

^^ Yes, I know. But I do not believe that should prevent the interior door handle from functioning properly....

 

Update:

In what I fully admit is a Hail Mary attempt to fix this very intermittent door handle / door lock issue, I picked up a $2 tube of powdered graphite at NAPA and fired a decent dose of it into the ignition switch cylinder this morning. Time will tell what effect if any this will have on the situation. If nothing else at least the ignition switch received a good and proper lube for the first time in years....

 

Update:

Two days after I lubed the ignition switch with powdered graphite, the door handle / door lock issues surfaced again this morning. Sure wish there was some method of determining if I have a door latch microswitch fault, a door module fault, both, neither, or something else entirely....

Brutal, NBCat, and any of the other master techs out there in forum land - can you provide any guidance? It would be most appreciated....

 

Update:

After several months of normal door latch operation once the weather cooled down in mid-October, both the drivers door latch assembly and the passenger door latch assembly exhibited some of the same intermittent flaky behavior a couple of days before Christmas, then settled back down to normal operation again once I lubed both door latch assemblies with yet more shots of silicone spray. I still have the new Omron D2SW-3L3MS microswitch that I ordered for the drivers door latch assembly back in August (thanks to Rothwell for the appropriate part number), so I ordered an identical microswitch for the passenger door latch assembly on Christmas Eve. Wayne (cjd777) and I will pick a good-weather date in the next few weeks and I will head to Spencer so we can replace both door latch microswitches in an effort to fix these door latch issues once and for all. This will be the first time we have gotten together to work on my wife's XK8 since late last February when we did the well-known power steering hose barb leak repair, so I am really looking forward to it....

 

Jon, All we have to do is think about this and it rains.
Finally got cooler weather, so a day or so without rain and we will get on it.
Still got to wonder why someone would make a door lock that had potential to lock someone in the car. They worked for many years by mechanical means or a push pull switch. Just me, I guess.

 

Well stated, Wayne. North Carolina certainly has had our fair share of rain the past couple of months (with more on the way this weekend - could be rain, sleet, freezing rain, or snow). We will get to these pesky door latch assemblies once we get a decent stretch of weather again. In the meantime, stay warm and dry....

 

I didn't see in the thread above, but did you say what you were hearing? When you tried to open the door, was there any noise from the mechanism, the normal "kachunk" as the motor in the door tries to unlock?

(At least normal for my '97)

Did you ever hear the car repeatedly cycle itself through lock and unlock when you told it to lock? Both of those would suggest a broken plastic tab inside the lock mechanism, and they lead to my door not opening.

 

volkris,

This is an extremely intermittent problem on my wife's car. When the interior door handle refuses to work, nothing happens when you pull it to open the door. No sound, nothing. It just pivots out toward you and then recesses again when you release your grip on it. Repeated pulls on the handle make no difference. I have found that when this happens, I can press the unlock button on my key fob and that always seems to reset the door latch assembly because it then "kachunks" (as you described it), then you see the interior door handle pop out to its normal position. At that point, pulling on the interior handle will then open the door every time....

Granted, we do not know if replacing these two door latch assembly microswitches will indeed fix this particular issue. But based upon everything I have read here on the forum, it is the next logical step in the repair process. Lubing the assembly with silicone spray works, but it is temporary. I am hoping that new microswitches will do the trick....

 

What I'm getting at here is that not only are there a few different microswitches, but there's also a worm gear pushing a plastic shuttle driven by motor. If the plastic shuttle breaks it can lead to the problem you're describing even though all of the microswitches are fine.

In my experience with these failures, it seems like when the door is locked the handles are physically disconnected in the mechanism. Pulling on them didn't do anything because because of that physical disconnect. There is a motor in the mechanism that handles disconnecting and reconnecting that mechanism.

Naturally the car needs to know what state the lock is in to know whether to turn that motor. That's where the plastic shuttle comes in: it lets to car know when the motor has connected/disconnected the linkage. If it's broken then the car won't know the door's locked.

So, the symptom I've seen of this shuttle failing is the car kachunking three or four times in a row, about once a second, as it tries to figure out whether it's locked or not and getting no feedback from the shuttle mechanism. I can scrounge up pictures of the thing in the forums if you've had that symptom.

 

Yes, I would appreciate any photos or additional details that you can provide. The more information I can gather, the better chance we have of actually fixing this issue....

Exactly what did you have to do to repair your car's door lock / door handle issue, and where did you obtain the required parts?

 

See this thread, especially the pictures in post #25.

I actually don't know how a person can be sure the plastic bit isn't broken without destructively opening the VDO motor assembly box to look. One could tick the motor forward and backward and see if the post moves in and out, but I would try to avoid running the motor more than a fraction of a second for fear that it would overshoot the limits of the worm gear.

The plastic bit manages engagement between the shuttle and the post, so if it breaks the two won't dis/reengage properly. Even if the post moves on the bench, the bit might still be broken so that occasionally when it disengages it doesn't properly reengage.

If it's broken, then a sane person would just get a new latch mechanism. Alternatively, one could try to glue the plastic bit back together, make it out of other plastic laying around, or 3D print a new one like I did.

In the end, though, unless you're getting the repetitive kachunk kachunking, I doubt yours is broken.

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...2/#post1607431

 

I also doubt that mine is broken because my issue is very intermittent (and has been since last July). I would think that if my interior plastic bit is indeed broken, I would have a door lock / door handle problem 100% of the time....

Also, as other owners with door latch assembly problems have reported, spraying silicone lubricant into my door latch assemblies temporarily fixes my problem (sometimes for several months). I do not think that would be the case if my interior plastic bit is broken as yours was....

Nevertheless, I will look into replacing the entire door latch assembly as Reverend Sam did (now nearly eight years ago). No idea how available or unavailable these entire door latch assemblies are these days, or how much they would cost. Sam paid $10 for his on ebay, but I doubt that such a deal exists now....