Drivers door won't open on my S3 :( Please HELP

[SamiG]

Can anyone help??

My drivers door has randomly stopped opening from the outside and i have no idea why

Opens fine from the inside though.

Only way i can get into my car is to hold the unlock button down so the windows drop and then stick my arm in and use the interior release handle.

Anyone got any knowledge on what you need replacing/fixing??

Thanks

 

[jay1601]

when is icey outside or just in genral ?

my drives will not open when the car is frozen. have to climb in through hte passanger side

 

[Stanley]

Same here.

 

[coyle]

Take your door card off, and try and open it from the outside, and look at the inside of the handle to see whats happening,the hinge joint on the handle may be jammed,or one of the metal rods could have come off, that would explain why its still working from the inside handle

 

[beachbuggy]

There's a metal rod that runs from the handle to the latch, if that's come off,bent etc it will cause the door not to open. Only way to chk as coyle said is to take the door card off and have a look. Hopefully you should just find something unclipped.

 

[steve bain]

ha ha. me too! damn ice

 

[coyle]

Ice will make everything stiff,so pretty common, as its likely quite dry anyway so ice will stop it moving,
It can only realy be one of two things, so if you have the door card off im sure you'll sort it easily

 

[Stanley]

It works 90% of the time, but only when iced up will it not work.

Similar problem really as when you shut the door and it just bounces back.

Ice gets into the mechanism and it stops it working.

Cup of hot water over ther latch does the trick for that problem, but not sure on what to do about not being able to open it from the outside.

 

[dany2k]

not sure if this is applicable to 8L a3/s3s but the mk4 golf had a similar issue whereby a little black tab used to get loose/pop out causing the outside door handle to stop working. you have to remove the plastic covering on the door handle (the squarish part) and re-insert it... or superglue it if it's broken :-D

 

[GeneralWest]

Mine did the same a couple of days ago. The drivers door wouldn't open from outside when it was icy that morning, so I climbed in from the passenger side and it opened with no effort at all from inside but it still wouldn't open from the outside. There were no sounds of ice cracking or anything when it opened. By the time I'd driven 15 miles it was fine and it's been ok since. I'll see what happens next time it's cold again.

 

[SamiG]

Thanks for the replies guys!

Definitely not ice as it's like it all day everyday!

Gonna take the doorcard off when I get a chance!

Working 13 hours a day 7 days a week doesn't leve me with much time to fiddle at present

 

[SamiG]

anyone got any advice/tips/how to's on how to remove the door card withour breaking anything lol.

no idea where to start with interior stuff

 

[Tj 0785]

Mine just done this but couldn't open from the inside locked it then unlocked it and it worked fine till next time I needed to get out of the car

 

[epox]