96 Town & Country door locks

Hi,

I have a 96 Town & Country with one door lock that has failed (stuck) and another on the way. I looked back through our receipts and a total of seven door lock actuators have already been replaced, 5 under warranty. What is the deal with the part? Is it designed to fail prematurely or is something causing them to fail in all 4 doors?

The dealer is unwilling to help - they act like the fact that the last one was replaced over a year ago is some monument to reliability. Is there someone I can contact at Chrysler to see if they can help resolve the problem?

Also, does anyone know if this is easy to replace? If so, any help on how to get the door panels off w/o destroying everything would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Mark

Reply to
Mark Erickson
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Interesting. My 96 GC still has the orginal door locks and they all work fine. The van has 136K miles so it isn't like they haven't been used.

Matt

Reply to
Matthew S. Whiting

Reply to
Mike Martin

My 96 GC had one sliding door lock actuator replaced early on under warranty. My recollection is that it was just making an odd whirring noise and not lock/unlock-ing the door. For a few years now, the drivers door doesn't always lock on the first attempt. It often requires unlocking and relocking a couple of times before the lock button will go down.

Reply to
beemer

Mine have "whined" for quite a while....sometimes they dont even work,then start again.

I had one totally jam on me (the dirver side sliding door). I purchased the new part for like $60 and replaced it myself. It was not easy, you had to take quite a bit apart to replate it.

The dealership tried to make me buy the whole door lock assembly for aournd $300, but I finally convinced them that that was crazy and they "found" in the computer they were "allowed" to sell just the actuator. Lucky me eh??

Anway - if you are pretty handy you can do it yourself.

Reply to
Terry

Reply to
mic canic

Thanks Terry. I have the door panel off and I can tell that the actuator is "stuck". I don't see an easy way to remove the actuator - it looks like it may be attached from the back. Do I have to remove the entire door lock assembly (looks like 3 bolts holding it in place) to get at the actuator's mounting bolts/screws?

Mark

Reply to
Mark Erickson

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