XK door doesn't want to close?

XK door doesn't want to close?

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Discussion

Shirt587

Original Poster:

360 posts

148 months

Monday 8th January 2018
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Something interesting this morning! Bit frosty, run credit card around window seals as usual because it's an X150 XK with the frameless doors, open door and get in - fine.
Start car, hit the "clear everything" button and then get out to scrape the windscreen as I'm in a little bit of a hurry. Fine.
Get back in car, pull door towards me to shut, and the door lock doesn't engage. Not fine.

Instead of it going 'clunk' and the window going up to seal, the window goes up then the door moves away from me a bit, the window drops and it re-opens. The Drivers Door Open thing keeps coming up on the dash. Office car park is OK but not great, and the car is simply not secure because just pulling gently on the door opens it as the latch and locks won't engage.

Ten minutes of mad panicking, followed by deciding that sod it, the garage is only a couple of miles away, it's still early, I can just hold the door shut and drive there and make it their problem. So, I hold the driver's door shut (having checked, the passenger one still shuts fine) and set off. As I get to the end of the road, I change hands holding the door shut in order to indicate only to discover that the door appears to have closed and locked as usual.

Get to the garage, get out of the car, shut the door behind me, and it closes like normal. Get back in car, drive to work, door is fine, lock it and walk away confused.

TL:DR - the door latch didn't want to engage first thing. After I'd driven about 50 yards, it seemed to engage normally. And now seems to be working fine. Anyone run into this before?

8bit

5,154 posts

168 months

Monday 8th January 2018
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Yes, this is far from unheard of. The cold weather either seems to affect the door latch I think, it's happened to me when I've had the car parked outdoors in very cold weather for a few hours or overnight. I've just resorted to sitting for a while until the car warms up a bit and find it works correctly after that.

Some people on Jaguar-specific forums reckon that giving the window rubbers a wipe down with some sort of silicone-based lubricant can help but given that the window drop/raise when you open and close the door seems to work OK I'm not convinced. I tried it anyway last winter and I still got the frozen door syndrome like you describe.

snafu10

74 posts

174 months

Monday 8th January 2018
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This has happened to me several times on very frosty nights ,i assume water in door lock gave a good soaking with wd40 job done

Simpo Two

88,554 posts

278 months

Monday 8th January 2018
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Same here - lock is sufficiently unfrozen to open but not to re-lock. I used a hot-air gun and WD40.

In your case I presume enough heat reached the lock from inside to free it.

Shirt587

Original Poster:

360 posts

148 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
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Thanks folks - really worried me on Monday morning, am going to give it a squirt with some WD40 earlier.

Interestingly, a combination of silicone spray and running a credit card around them before trying to open means I've never had a problem with doors getting stuck...

Piersman2

6,664 posts

212 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
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Mine does exactly the same on any heavily frosted morning.

I soon learnt that just sitting in the car with the door pulled closed for 10 mins with the heating on full bore would free mine up.

I intially tried WD40, warm water on outside, etc... but none of that seemd to make any difference.

Simpo Two

88,554 posts

278 months

Wednesday 10th January 2018
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I had an XJ40 and two S-Types and none of them suffered from fozen lock mechanisms.

Sometimes I think that Jaguar thought 'Hey, we've made perfectly functioning locks for decades, let's make a st one instead'.

It's only a few bits of metal!

Let's not even talk about the glovebox latch - what the fk is going on there?

GeniusOfLove

3,119 posts

25 months

Wednesday 8th January
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THREAD RESURRECTION!

My X150 did this today, but if you cba waiting for 10 minutes I just flicked the plastic latch mechanism to closed with my finger, pulled the door handle to open it again, and the door was fine.

Heritage.

Patrick Bateman

12,582 posts

187 months

Wednesday 8th January
quotequote all
GeniusOfLove said:
THREAD RESURRECTION!

My X150 did this today, but if you cba waiting for 10 minutes I just flicked the plastic latch mechanism to closed with my finger, pulled the door handle to open it again, and the door was fine.

Heritage.
While you're here and on the subject of door locks...have you ever had it where the passenger door doesn't unlock when you've got out the driver door?

Unlocks no problem off the key but more often than not when I go round the other side to get my st out the car I have to unlock it from the key.

GeniusOfLove

3,119 posts

25 months

Thursday 9th January
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Patrick Bateman said:
GeniusOfLove said:
THREAD RESURRECTION!

My X150 did this today, but if you cba waiting for 10 minutes I just flicked the plastic latch mechanism to closed with my finger, pulled the door handle to open it again, and the door was fine.

Heritage.
While you're here and on the subject of door locks...have you ever had it where the passenger door doesn't unlock when you've got out the driver door?

Unlocks no problem off the key but more often than not when I go round the other side to get my st out the car I have to unlock it from the key.
The lock mechanism in these cars and all the late FoMoCo Jaguar cars can be problematic, my passenger door will open fine off keyless if I just pull the handle but won't unlock off the central locking with the button on the fob (I am aware of two stage unlocking) or if I open the other door from keyless. If I have a passenger I have to lean over and pull the interior handle or open it for them with the keyless fob in my pocket.

I have had the same thing on an X351 rear door and it's apparently very common on XFs. I put it down to "old car things" and work around it, the motor isn't a huge amount of money but changing it looks fiddly. I know some people love to keep a car working exactly as it came from the factory, and I used to be like that, but these days on a daily driver/easily replaced car I run a tactical policy of managed retreat pretty much from the second they come out of warranty hehe

Edited by GeniusOfLove on Thursday 9th January 12:25