Having problems with the door locks on my 1999 Explorer 4 dr. Truck has electric locks, keyless and remote entry.

About two weeks ago, the driver's door lock began acting up. It would occasionally stick, either in the locked or unlocked position. Usually, one could hit the button a few times and get it to work.

Tonight, it quit working completely. The **** is in the up (unlocked) position, and the door opens and closes fine from the inside and out. Problem is, the door won't lock-not with the keyless remote, not with the unlock button, not with the key, and not with the ****, which will not move from the unlocked position. All the other locks appear to be functioning fine.

I talked with a friend who's a mechanic at my part-time job. He used to be a Ford tech and said it sounds like the lock actuator is bad. He couldn't recall if my vehicle has a separate actuator or it is part of the lock mechanism, but either way he said it is not a big deal to fix.

Has anyone out there had a similar problem? Any experience replacing the actuator? Friend said I would have to take off the inside door panel, but he also made this sound like not much of a big deal.

 

At the risk of jinxing myself, I think I fixed the problem this morning. If the repair holds, it'll have cost me nothing but about 45 minutes of my time.

I was able to get the interior door panel off without too much problem (not real fond of those white plastic clips). Poking around the door mechanism, I noticed there was a rod just bouncing around insided there. One end was attached (I think to the actuator, but I couldn't actually see) and the other end was just floating around loose.

I looked around further and found that there was a pink clip on one end of the cylinder lock mechanism. The rod just reached the clip, and it snapped right in, although it did take some acrobatics on my part (I had to wedge my arm in the door at an odd angle; I had one of those "Oh *****" moments when I initially couldn't free my arm from the door).

I tried everything a couple of times with the door panel off, and again after reassembling everything; so far, so good. I just can't shake, however, that nagging feeling that it was too easy, and there has to be some deeper problem that caused the rod to pop out of the clip to begin with.

 

No you got. Sometimes the easiest way to fix something is to go to the source. You did that and found the problem. Your door actuator rod was loose. It probably came loose due to bad roads or a hard hit and jump or just came loose due to the door being closed too hard. but from what I can tell from what you said yeah you got it.