mspearl95

-95 lexus ls400-

Forgive me if this information is available on this forum somewhere already... tried to search it out but couldn't find the exact problem I am experiencing. I am thinking it has to do with the door actuator, but wanted to see what you guys think.

Here's the situation. Driver door lock suddenly stopped locking from either the master switch or the remote fob, but will still lock/unlock with the key. When drivers door is left unlocked, remote will not lock car, but if I manually lock the drivers side door with key, the remote works fine, everything locks and arms as it should. Is this definitely the actuator motor, or could it be something else? It all started when the car suddenly stopped beeping when locking remotely yesterday, and I discovered that the drivers door wasn't locking. Are these actuators prone to sudden failure?

I don't know if this is related, but the day before, I remote unlocked(pushed twice for 'all unlock') and entered through the passenger front door. After about 10 seconds with the passenger door open, I got one long, continuous beep that lasted about 10-20 seconds, and then stopped on its own. not sure what this means. Any info anyone has about this issue would be very helpful. Thanks all!

Yamae

Sounds like the motor in the door lock actuator is dead. If so, this is a rather common problem. Dealers replace the whole unit but in my case I fixed it myself just cleaning the inside of the motor. It was time consuming efforts to remove the unit but I enjoyed it thinking how to do it. An old man should use his brain and hands to keep him young.

As far as I have seen several door lock actuators used for my Celsior and other Japanese cars, all of them were caused by clogged carbon dusts inside of the motor. There is a current limiting device (called Posistor) inside of the motor and it limits the current going through the bridge made by the carbon dusts. The motor is so small that it accumulates the carbon dusts inside and this causes a short circuit.

Below link is my blog writing for my friends who used to enjoy DIY life together with me when I was in San Diego. You can see how I fixed the broken unit cleaning the motor. This is for 98 Celsior though.
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/mae_yas/1405005.html

billydpowe

iTrader: (1)

I fixed mine the same way Yamae did. a couple of years ago, just cleaning the contact points in side the motor. I did not take pictures but these will show you the contact points: good luck

mspearl95

Awesome thanks you guys! Planning on digging into this this weekend, so we'll see what comes!

Cheers!

oldskool95

Also I would like to add that my rear doors would not lock unlock without me manually doing so. When I opened the actuator i found that the swing arm was cracked where it is pressed onto the peg, so i wiped off the grease and applied some superglue to the pin and swing arm and put it back on the peg applied some more glue to the top of the swing arm where it meets the peg, then slapped it all back together and voila rear doors lock and unlock when I lock and unlock the car YAY. So long story short scheck the swing arm for a crack.

oldskool95

Also the actuator pictured is slightly different then on the 95, ours have different internals the motor does not come loose like the one pictured, and the contacts and actuator arm are different as well

billydpowe

iTrader: (1)

YES, I do not know what year model the photo is.... and our motor was soldered in also. BUT my point in posting the photo is: if you are a DIY, you will have enough smarts to clean the contacts and hopefully get it working...

did not mean to lead anyone astray . I guess I need to just watch and let you guys figure it out.

mspearl95

Yeah I'm kinda hoping that it may just be one of the pegs that came loose. From the looks of the door panel, it seems someone has been into it before(i just bought this car about a month ago), and so mb they had a problem with a broken peg or something and just rigged it to work for awhile. We'll see when I get in there!

@billydpowe- so that pic is of a newer actuator/motor? on the 95s, it doesn't come out so easy?

billydpowe

iTrader: (1)

I do not know what year model it is from, here is the link, you can read it and find out.
http://forum.ih8mud.com/100-series-c...placement.html

LScowboyLS

if you live in an area where is gets very hot (i.e Phoenix, Tucson, Dubai, etc.), I have found that when an LS400 lives in this type of environment, the door lock actuators (the expensive electronic computerized motor part) go bad frequently - if you do not live in a very hot area, the problem is usually elsewhere, such as the mechanical issues mentioned above.

oldskool95

billydpowe i got your point of the picture i was just adding information for mspearl95 to remember and look for when he gets to his on his project of digging into it. and as for LScowboyLS i have been lucky so far with the motor part the car has been in central fl all its life and hasnt needed new motors yet and hope i dont have to dig into it again for that either such a tedious task small workspace and awkward angles to get a screwdriver in there to get the motor out even with removing the two star screws.

west709

im having the same problem on my rear passenger side

Dubbayoo

I bought a used door lock actuator on Ebay; repair place put it in;

oldskool95

whole job should take about 30-45 min depending on tools and know how.

mspearl95

Finally dug into it today; it was the door lock actuator. Luckily I had already found a good(used) replacement, so it was a snap. Actually ended up finding a guy on CL(craiglsist, not club lexus ) who was parting out a 95 ls400, and picked up all four actuators for 25 bucks ea. That way i'll have replacements if any of the others fail. The hardest part of the replacement was getting the actuators around the window track! Whole process took me about 1.5 hours. I'll probably open the broken one up to see if the motor is fixable or not at some point. Thanks again guys for all the pertinent info!