Door solenoid

[milothepeanut]

Is there a How To on door solenoid for the Cebera on here?

[Imran999]

There isn’t a great write-up.
It was the first job i did on my car, and I took some pics and intended to do one, but never got around to it.

So, here’s a quick ‘live attempt’.

- Assuming drivers door solenoid is to be replaced.
- Mechanism located behind the ‘C’ pillar trim
- Remove the lower back-rest portion of the rear-seat (driver’s side), 3 nuts with large washers accessible from driver side rear wheel arch - I recommend removing the wheel. The nuts were m6 if I remember correctly, and the threads were very long, so it took ages to get each nut off. The washers were sika-flexed to the body, but at some point fell to the floor of their own will
- Remove the base of the rear seat (2 nuts under the car with two large washers, nicely obscured by the chassis outrigger tube that runs directly under the seat base)
- Remove the seat belt receptacle - large hex bolt
- Now the C-pillar trim can be pulled away from the pillar, but be very careful, it can easily break where the slot for the seat belt is located, so use a bulldog clip and some paper to bridge and add strength
- I was unable to pull the trim completely away, it is fixed up near or behind the speaker, and I couldn’t figure out how
- I was able to pull it about 6-8” away and that was enough to get to the mechanism
- The mechanism is a regular door latch system with a solenoid valve attached and two release cables (bicycle brake cables), one for the boot mounted release and one for the drivers sill mounted release
- In my case, the solenoid would always fire, but the door wouldn’t always open - I deduced that this was because the piston on the valve wasn’t fully retracting after each fire. There is an accordion style boot on the piston and this helps to bring it back, but this boot had come unstuck from the main body of the valve. I replaced the whole solenoid anyway, because I had a spare anyway

Reinstallation is the same steps in reverse.

Good luck, and send me a message through the forum if you get stuck, happy to help.

[milothepeanut]

Okay the solenoid is out. Does anyone know the part number or what these come from please?

[Imran999]

https://www.abacuscaralarms.co.uk/alarmshop/index....

[DuncanM]

Imran999 said:

There isn’t a great write-up.
It was the first job i did on my car, and I took some pics and intended to do one, but never got around to it.

So, here’s a quick ‘live attempt’.

- Assuming drivers door solenoid is to be replaced.
- Mechanism located behind the ‘C’ pillar trim
- Remove the lower back-rest portion of the rear-seat (driver’s side), 3 nuts with large washers accessible from driver side rear wheel arch - I recommend removing the wheel. The nuts were m6 if I remember correctly, and the threads were very long, so it took ages to get each nut off. The washers were sika-flexed to the body, but at some point fell to the floor of their own will
- Remove the base of the rear seat (2 nuts under the car with two large washers, nicely obscured by the chassis outrigger tube that runs directly under the seat base)
- Remove the seat belt receptacle - large hex bolt
- Now the C-pillar trim can be pulled away from the pillar, but be very careful, it can easily break where the slot for the seat belt is located, so use a bulldog clip and some paper to bridge and add strength
- I was unable to pull the trim completely away, it is fixed up near or behind the speaker, and I couldn’t figure out how
- I was able to pull it about 6-8” away and that was enough to get to the mechanism
- The mechanism is a regular door latch system with a solenoid valve attached and two release cables (bicycle brake cables), one for the boot mounted release and one for the drivers sill mounted release
- In my case, the solenoid would always fire, but the door wouldn’t always open - I deduced that this was because the piston on the valve wasn’t fully retracting after each fire. There is an accordion style boot on the piston and this helps to bring it back, but this boot had come unstuck from the main body of the valve. I replaced the whole solenoid anyway, because I had a spare anyway

Reinstallation is the same steps in reverse.

Good luck, and send me a message through the forum if you get stuck, happy to help.

Saved for future use, thank you

[ukkid35]

Be aware that the door lock mechanism has a lever that isolates the catch, presumably used as a child lock on the cars to which it was originally fitted

Edited by ukkid35 on Friday 11th June 08:48

[Imran999]

Oh yes, I remember reading about this, thanks Paul, very useful tip.

[Juddder]

Imran999 said:

There isn’t a great write-up.
It was the first job i did on my car, and I took some pics and intended to do one, but never got around to it.

Hey @Imran - do you still have the pictures you took of this job as it looks like I'm going to need to do it too and it would be great to get some tips before I start?

Door used to work fine, but currently the window drops then no opening actuator sound so, bar testing with power to the drive from the door control ECU which I need to do, it feels like the actuator has given up

Thanks

[LLantrisant]

i was going through several door-opening problems as well and after installing "new" solenoids (from online suppliers) the problem was solved just for a short time.

than i contacted a specialist and he was saying to me:


forgot all those aftermarket solenoids you can get online. they all come from china.
the mechanism has to much play from the factory and due to the short stroke in the TVR (in combination with the play) they will quickly fail again.
even the ones TVR used, without return spring, were a misconstruction. they only workd because the solenoids were made from a better qualtiy, but from the design (how TVR adapted them) the failure was already built-in.
you need to find some with a retrun-spring....best would be 2nd hand fiesta boot-realse ones.

[Juddder]

LLantrisant said:

you need to find some with a retrun-spring....best would be 2nd hand fiesta boot-realse ones.

Thanks @Llantrisant

Good advice and I've just picked up a Fiesta one from eBay for £15 fully tested

The mounting screws appear to be a 45 degrees to each other whereas the boot solenoid one I took out had them in parallel with each other - did you have to add new mounts for yours when you fitted it?

Here's what the one I bought looks like...

[Juddder]

Juddder said:

Thanks @Llantrisant

Good advice and I've just picked up a Fiesta one from eBay for £15 fully tested

I tested the mechanism this weekend with a 12V bench power supply and the close and open of the actuator is super speedy thanks to the nice spring mechanism on the Ford Fiesta unit.

I'm going to take this and try and work out a good way to mount it in the boot to replace the standard actuator

[LLantrisant]

after the doors where fine over summer, i recently had again problems with unlocking /opening the doors. electricaly all fine, but the door wasnt dis-engaged from the lock and the solenoid sounded not as "quick" as before.

when i was untightending the 3 fixing-bolts of the lock, suddenly it was working.
i recognized that there is a small pin (red circled in below pic) which is roting during unlocking.
when the fixing bolts were tightend properly, the pin was pressed against the retaining plate and could therefore no longer rotate

i put some shims between plate and lock (geen circled) and erything was fine

original pic came from Powerperformance