Central locking

Q I have a 2005 Vauxhall Astra Breeze 1.4 with 98,000 miles. The offside rear door is locked and won’t open with either the inner or outer handle. The central locking on the other doors and tailgate is working.

I had problems with the offside rear door last year. The locking became intermittent and the door speakers stopped working. This problem was traced to broken wires and fixed with a new section of wiring loom. There were no further problems until just recently.

Is it possible to get to the locking mechanism without causing too much damage to the door trim? There is a small screw holding the trim on at the bottom, which I can get to from inside the car. As the car is reaching the end of its useful life I’m not that concerned about getting the central locking working on that door, just with being able to open it from a safety point of view. John Lunday

A The door will need to open for the MOT, so this is a problem that needs to be resolved. If the door is deadlocked due to the central locking solenoid sticking, there are two things I would try first. The first is to thump the side of the door near to the lock as the central locking is operated; if the solenoid is sticking, this may be enough to free it off. Second, I would attempt the same process with the engine running. Very often the slightly higher voltage from a working engine will be enough to give the solenoid that extra boost to operate.

After trying that, if you still have a locked door, the best way to detach the door panel is to first remove the rear seat base, giving extra room to access the doorcard. The panel is secured with the screw you can see and two screws within the rear handle/arm-rest. There is also a screw on the release handle trim panel that needs to be undone. Once the screws are extracted, the trim panel is held with pop fixings and can be pulled away from the door.

It may be the case that the door lock will not free off. In this case, the easiest way to unlock the door is to split apart the lock mechanism with the help of a large screwdriver.