56 plate Polo passenger door not opening

[Toilet Duck]

Morning all,

My 56 plate 1.9tdi Polo has developed a problem with the passenger door. For the last few weeks, I noticed that the passenger door intermittently failed to open with the remote. If I pressed it again, or locked then unlock, it normally came back to life. I also tried using the "master" unlock/lock button on the inside of the drivers door to the same effect. Unfortunately, it won't open at all now. Even if I try opening from the inside with the internal passenger door release handle it will not open. The "button" at the door edge by the glass stays down. If I try to pull the passenger door lever on the inside, the button raises then drops back down as soon as I release the handle. I cannot open the passenger door at all.

Before I start stripping the door card off and poking around, can anyone point me in the direction of the likely culprit? Is there some sort of actuator on the passenger side that is likely to have gone tits up?

Cheers for any help!

[bigjobbo]

I would check the wiring between door and A pillar, the door control unit is slave to drivers door via a Lin bus wire, white with purple tracer. The wires tend to break simply due to wear and tear of the door opening. Good luck.

[Toilet Duck]

bigjobbo said:

I would check the wiring between door and A pillar, the door control unit is slave to drivers door via a Lin bus wire, white with purple tracer. The wires tend to break simply due to wear and tear of the door opening. Good luck.

Cheers matey

Just as an update, the wires turned out to be OK; I traced the fault down to the mechanical lock/electronic solenoid unit. It was the electronic side that had gone faulty, but I had to to buy a whole unit (£40 for a brand new patent part so not too bad).

As an aside, I'm surprised that this design is "legal." If the car crashed and was burning up, the passenger would not have been able to open the passenger door, and the door couldn't be opened up from the outside by any good Samaritans either. This is because the electronic side of the door lock somehow overided the mechanical side (two seperate mechanical releases; the inside handle mechanism and the outside handle mechanism). Considering that the EU are banning "high powered" vacuum cleaners and other such dribble, I find it strange that this one was allowed to slip under the radar.