Well I just opened up my door and didn't see any real reason for it to stick and of course it's not sticking now so I cleaned everything up and lubed it, we'll see what happens.

 

I took out the door panel with the door stuck "locked" last night. Dug around quite a bit, it's not the power lock preventing it from unlocking. Got the door to open, after more poking around there's a lever you can see near the latch area that goes up and down when you lock/unlock. Well, it's not going all the way down. Look at it closer, that whole area near the latch is plastic. The top side is just all sorts of chewed away, broken, etc.

In futzing with it, I manually closed the latch while the door was still open and couldn't get it to open (locked it again in testing). So I used a small punch to strike that lever down and was able to get it to open so I could close the door.

Waiting on part, when I get the old one out I'll do some exploratory surgery and see what's up.

James

 

Interesting...Yes please post up your findings when you get things apart.

 

Well I'm sure mine is the outside handle button sticking now.

 

My drive's side door failed to electric lock a couple of times in the past few weeks. Today, I locked it and slammed it shut while in Minneapolis. The rest of the day I climbed over the center console to get in the saddle. When I got home I found that the manual lock button felt stiff, and didn't have the snap you would expect. I rigged up a piece of line and a jack handle to the lock button and slapped it upward sharply several times, then held upward force on it and was able to open the door.

I think I'll find the rubber actuator boot wound up in it as was mentioned before.

I looked up the fitment chart for the OEM part number and it looks like it fits most if not all ram pickups and vans from 1986 to 2007

Hopefully I'll get to get into the door tomorrow and see what's up. It might actually get slightly above freezing while I'm working on it. I'll have to pause once in awhile and cool off.

 

I've been having trouble unlocking the driver's door with the key. After oiling and injecting grease and making a huge mess of the latch assembly, I finally removed the latch from the door.

I discovered that there is a big plastic piece that contains the spring for the latch release and acts as a guide and stop for some of the slides and levers in the assembly. This piece seemed a little distorted (from aging in the AZ sun for most of its life?) and rotated up. . . which caused the outside release slide to be pushed up slightly in its resting position.

The problem was: When the door is locked, that slide is pulled away from the latch release bar, so that if the outside button is pushed, the bar just slides up and does nothing. Unlocking the door pushes the slide back under the release bar. With the plastic stop holding it up slightly, however, the slide couldn't be pushed back under the release bar. (They key would turn, and the pop-up would come up, but just shy of all the way.)

So, I pried the plastic piece back around until it sort of snapped into place (allowing the slide to drop down significantly further), drilled a hole, and put in a stainless screw to keep it in position. We'll see how long it works.

Sorry the assembly is not fully cleaned and lubed for reinstallation in these photos . . .