Altea Central Locking Problem

[stusweeney]

Hi Everyone,

I hope someone can offer me some help.

Recently someone kindly swiped my driver's side wing mirror (manual operation) leaving it hanging off. How kind!

The result seems to be the following symptoms:

driver's door can not be locked or unlockedby the remote (all other doors do) but it can be locked and unlocked by the key

internal switch for locking and unlocking all doors does not work

electric window switches on the driver's side door do not work for all electric windows

individual switches for electric windows on each door do work

the LED on the passenger door for alarm indication is off

the alarm goes off randomly

All the above would indicate a problem with something in the driver's door. Any suggestions anyone before I take the car to a dealer.

I have an MY06 Altea 1.6 Ref Sport.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Stu

 

[Seatmann]

Personally I would take the door apart and have a look. It's more than likely that the wiring has gotten damaged maybe from moisture or something. If you damage the clips holding the inner door card on, you can usually buy a big pack off of ebay for a couple of quid.

 

[stusweeney]

Thanks for the reply.

This morning I got in the car and everything was ok which would support the idea of a damaged / loose connection or damaged cable. I will get the door card off and have a look.

Thanks again.

Stu

 

[craig1410]

Hi Stu,

I've just created a new thread for a similar issue to the one you describe here and I was wondering if you managed to resolve the problem, and how?

My problem is that the interior light is always on (unless turned off at the main switch) and my alarm LED is always on. My electric window switch on the driver's side is not working even though the passenger's switch will operate that window. I can't lock the car unless I do it with the key. Even then I have to drive it briefly to make the other doors auto-lock and then park it and lock the driver's door with the key.

All very frustrating!

Any help you can offer would be gratefully received!

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[Seatmann]

Sounds like you have a dodgy door switch, If there isn't one on the door frame then it'll be part of the lock itself, what age is your car?

 

[craig1410]

Sounds like you have a dodgy door switch, If there isn't one on the door frame then it'll be part of the lock itself, what age is your car?

Hi,

It's a September 2005 Altea 1.6 essence.

Yes my first thought was the door switch but I couldn't find it to try actuating it manually. The weird thing was that to begin with I could make the alarm LED go off by closing the door half way but the LED would come on again before the door was fully closed. On one occasion I managed to close the door completely (very slowly) and the LED stayed off. The central locking then worked as normal. This was only temporary though and now the LED stays on regardless of how far open or closed the door is.

This might indicate a broken wire within the hinge wiring? What do you think?

Thanks for your response,
Craig.

Edit: I just read in the workshop manual (Elsawin) that there are connectors within the rubber bellows in the door hinge area. My bet is that there is a bad connection in there somewhere. Will take a look tomorrow in daylight.

 

[craig1410]

Just to provide an update, I've fixed my car.

Turned out to be a broken brown wire inside the hinge bellows. The wire was completely severed but there was enough slack to allow me to solder and shrink-sleeve it. Bit tricky working out how to get into the bellows and how to avoid losing one end of the connection inside the A-pillar. It turned out that the A-pillar connector has a very clever locking mechanism which allows it to be securely locked into the A-pillar aperture while the door harness is removed.

Anyway, I hope this update helps someone else out in future.

Cheers,
Craig.

 

[TllEWL]

*WARNING* Epic thread-resurection

The result seems to be the following symptoms:

driver's door can not be locked or unlockedby the remote (all other doors do) but it can be locked and unlocked by the key

internal switch for locking and unlocking all doors does not work

electric window switches on the driver's side door do not work for all electric windows

individual switches for electric windows on each door do work

the LED on the passenger door for alarm indication is off

With the exception of the mirror damage and alarm going off (afaik), I'm having exactly the same issues with our Toledo


Did anyone hear if/how this was resolved ?

I've disconnected the battery for a couple of hours ...no joy

Going to start investigating the wiring round the door...

 

[Viking]

Yep. My mate had this exact problem a couple of weeks ago. After scanning it with VCDS and clearing codes, there was a door control module fault. The urgent issue with my mate was the Golf has a push button fuel filler cap rather than the SEAT locking one, and the button is in the drivers door also, and this wasn't working either. He stripped off the door card, and removed the plug to the control module. Then plugged it back in and everything worked again.

It might be that your door control is ronnied, but at first I'd try a disconnect.

 

[Seatmann]

If that doesn't work it'd be worth using a multimeter and checking the wiring between the plug for the door loom behind the kick panel and the door module. The door loom can break.

 

[Viking]

If that doesn't work it'd be worth using a multimeter and checking the wiring between the plug for the door loom behind the kick panel and the door module. The door loom can break.

That's what I was recommending to my mate as I was certain it would be the fault. However, the symptoms are exactly the same, so I'd put money on the door module.

 

[TllEWL]

Cheers guys, will give that a go.

I found the connection in the a-post, so decided to try the other side into the door to see if I could see damage ...man, that's a squeeze - I succeeded in prodding the seal into the door, swearing at it lots, finding that the wiring's protected by a boot that goes several cm into the door, and putting everything back the way it was. A productive 20mins

 

[TllEWL]

Well what a bugger that is!

Found a How To for the doorcard (still don't know why the speaker had to come out!?) but it was for the passenger side ...so didn't say you had to prise the switch panel up to get to the other screw behind them

That's the trouble with these cars now - everything's held together with such strong clips, you don't know whether to just pull hard...or if you've missed a screw somewhere



When we talk about the door module - do we mean the blue plug on the door-lock ? That was a nightmare too, but after jamming a small screwdriver in the top I got it off

Reconnected it again, but it's not playing ball

Leaving both the lock and the battery disconnected overnight...

 

[TllEWL]

Good news ! (kinda)

Reconnected the lock and battery - in that order - this morning and the door-open light has come on on the dash and the remote central locking doesn't work anymore. Think it's the soldered joints.

Parking up and having to disconnect the battery before taking the key out (so all the doors stay auto-locked) is going to become a bit of a chore till I can fix it

 

[Viking]

You might need to resync the remote to the car perhaps? Might've stopped talking to each other.

 

[TllEWL]

Well after unplugging the door lock again I managed to get the light off, so the central locking was working again and I was just able to use the key to lock the driver's door.


Spent a couple of hours yesterday stripping the door to fit a new, improved 2011 Altea door lock - DO NOT DO THIS !

It's my own fault for not doing my research, but the newer models don't look anything like the existing door locks; the tab where it's joined to the doorcard is in a different positon, and it wouldn't talk to the car at all


To make matters worse, if you're going to take the doorcard off you really need to be sure you're going to have the problem fixed, cos once you unbolt the window rails and the weight of the glass pushes them down, if you don't have power to the windows to lower them slightly (which I don't) it's impossible to get the window rails back into position.


Broken that many clips trying to get the door apart, that I'm just going to go buy a new door from a scrapyard on Friday. Will update when this is finally solved.

.