need help figuring out how to lock/unlock my 300TD Wagon

[garybeck]

as I recently mentioned, I'm a proud new owner of a 1985 300TD wagon.

the previous owner gave me the chiltons and Hayes manuals, but not the original owner manual unfortunately.

I'm having trouble figuring out how the door locks work. I can't find a switch inside the vehicle to lock/unlock the door(s). Is there a way to lock/unlock from inside? There must be!?!?!? The only thing we've been able to do is lock it with the key, on the driver side door. It seems to be impossible to manually unlock or lock the doors from inside.

My wife just got stuck and had to call AAA. she had unlocked the passenger door with the key and put the key inside. when she closed the door, it locked itself automatically!!! What the?

So can someone explain to me what is going on here? What if you're in a dangerous neighborhood and you want to lock the doors when you're inside? How do you do that?

Why did the door lock itself when she closed it?

thanks

[garybeck]

although my wife swears she couldn't manually lift and lower the locks from inside, it appears that now they can be lifted manually. is there any time when even the front locks can not be operated manually? the rear doors seem to lock and unlock automatically with the front. I guess I just need to find the manual...

[ridinsmooth]

The 123 has a central locking mechanism, it's powered off of vacuum, (if you have a problem with that system, you'll be hunting for a while). When the driver's door is locked or unlocked, the other doors will also lock or unlock. To lock them all from inside, simply push down on the driver's door lock knob, as long as there aren't any major leaks, they should all go down, same thing for unlocking, just pull up on it. Each door can also be unlocked independently of the system by simply pulling up on the lock knob.

As far as why the door would lock itself, I'm not really sure, my front passenger door does it too sometimes, no idea why though. HTH.

[WeVonBraun]

Hey I didn't know I could lock all doors from inside by simply pushing down the driver's lock button. It's cool, I had wonder if this was a feature already in those years but never dare to try anything to check it out. [:0][:D][8D]