The front and rear door locks (not the tailgate) in my 1990 SR5 4Runner are pretty tough to move. I have tried looking in the door panel of two of the doors to see if there was any sort of mechanical issue and I didn't spot anything. I lubed everything with a silicon spray on one of my doors last night and it did not help.

When you press the switch or open with the key from the outside all the door locks try to open but they just can't. I can manually lock and unlock them but they are really tough.

I am wondering if I can spray some sort of grease directly into the actuator where the rod and rubber boot are? Has anyone been able to free these up at all or locate a good replacement? I would really like to get my power door lock functionality back. Any sort of help would be greatly appreciated!

 

Please help. Are theses actuators rebuildable? I'd hate to take one apart and find out they aren't and lose whatever functionality I have left.

 

Don't take the actuator apart. The locks shouldn't take much force manually, and yours do, so the fault is not in the actuator.

Don't spray lubricant at random. The actuators are designed to work well for the life of the vehicle without additional lubricant; spray anything is just going to attract dirt. And that will make it "sticky."

At this point, I think you're going to have to remove the inner panel, educate yourself on how the locks work, then disconnect components one at a time (the actuator, the inside door lock button, the outside key-operated lock) until you find the one that's holding it up.

Here are some photos; I don't know if they will help. https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...t-work-254772/

Last, be careful with the plastic clips that hold the pushrods. If you drop one inside the door you won't be able to retrieve it with a magnet (duh!) They are, however, a very standard part and you can buy bags of them on eBay, if it comes to that.

 

Thanks for the reply! I managed to free up one of the door locks by cleaning the pivot points on all the rods and lubricating them. That door works as well as new now. The other two doors I got into I was not so lucky. I will have to take the mechanism apart to see if I can find the source of the bind.

I don't know why I didn't think of this when I was in there, but if I disconnect the pushrod from the actuator I should be able to isolate if the binding is in the actuator or the mechanism. DOH! I'll do that now. I hope it's something that I can fix.

I noticed on one of the doors, the first pivot point that connects the push pull part at the door seems to wobble a bit when it pivots, which makes me think the pivot point is worn out and elongated. I guess I'll just have to crack into them now.

 

The bags of clips on ebay are cheap ($5.00 for.like 20)