So I moved my S500 from its cozy shaded parking space to the hot sun so that I could drive one of my other Benzos, then returned in late afternoon and poor S500 had been sitting with the Drivers door side facing in the hot sun all day. Got in the car, shut the door gently, and then heard a POP inside the door. Followed by a gentle sound of air hissing for a sec. Now the door is no longer closing itself. I'm thinking a hose popped off inside the door, having gotten very hot. It's a 2002, maybe the hose was getting old? I imagine the door will have to be taken apart to fix this. If only I had closed the door harder. What should I look for when taking the door panel off? I did apologize to the car for leaving it in the sun all day.
If you are good with makeshift repairs, the actuators can sometime be repaired. There are numerous threads on this repair on this forum. You might be able to buy just the actuator.
The soft close actuator sticks out of bottom of the door latch mechanism. You don't want to buy the entire door latch mechanism - $$$.
^^ Agreed. Same thing happened to me with the wife's car (the project 2000 S500) some months ago. I tried using a secondhand replacement. Leaked. So, I bought a new one and did the job again. Gotta say it was considerably easier the second time. :grin Yeah, it was in the low US $400's, but we won't have to worry about it for a looooong time to come.
Here's a post from when I went through repairing several of those vacuum actuators in the rear headrests. They're lightly similar to the ones in the door locks. https://www.benzworld.org/forums/w220-s-class/3000107-rear-head-rests-loud-pop-passenger.html
But you can see in the pictures how you can glue the actuator back together and reinforce it with a hose clamp.
If one of your actuators has broken, the others are likely not far behind. If you're up for it, you can pull out all the others and glue a hose clamp on each of them to reinforce and prevent them from breaking in the first place, saving yourself the $400 replacement cost. Of course, you're still having to do the painful work. But... I wish I'd gotten a little more motivated and done the rear doors...before they both broke...making the repairs even more difficult. I had to redo the driver's door twice due to a leak. I got the passenger door actuator reenforced while it was still good and a year later it's still going strong.
On the rear headrests two of the actuators broke. While I had them out, I pulled the third and reenforced it, too. All three are still going strong.
Here's a (lousy) photo of my first attempt at repairing the driver's door lock actuator. The spring inside is very strong and you'll need someway to hold the actuator halves together until the JB Weld cures. That's why it's so much easier to simply apply and glue the hose clamp on BEFORE they break.
It is far better to reinforce a good used one, than try and repair one that has already gone pop.
My method is simple, where the lugs are that break I put a thin smear of epoxy around the lugs / joint and then use a Stainless CV Joint Gaiter Band around them and crimp it properly.
Not had a reinforced good used one fail yet, seen tons of repaired ones fail in short order
HTH,
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