"Locked out!" C3 Door Lock Fix
Steve, owner of C&S Corvettes and the CorvettePartsCenter.com website steps in for Lyle while he's on holiday. Steve talks about an issue we hear over and over...getting locked out of a C3. Steve demonstrates how to get back in, unlock the car and resolve the issue without destroying your cars door panel.
Video Transcript: hi everybody I'm Steve from C&S corvettes in Sarasota Florida I'm here today to talk about a really common problem with the c3 cars 68 right on up through 82. many of you have probably already experienced it and that is that's that a time will come when you go to unlock your door or open your door and it just simply won't unlock I've had customers destroy their their doors their quarter panels their interior door panels all sorts of things to try to get into the car it's a fairly simple thing to do and i have this door display that we have here in our showroom then I'm going to try to show you the way to do it without making a major ordeal out of it what happens is everything will work fine on your car doors open doors do all they're supposed to do one day you lock the car and then go oh i left my camera inside and go to unlock it by squeezing the door handle while the door is still locked that triggers the whole thing what you'll experience from there is the door won't open and when you try to unlock it either with the turn knob inside by the door handle or the little pull out knob on the the later cars or by the lock it won't feel right when you try to turn it to unlock it it'll only go about halfway therein lies the problem so what i'm going to do is using this i'm going to show you how to get in and in an unceremonious manner get your door to open without doing any damage okay folks here is the culprit this linkage rod inside the door now of course your door your your painted outer door skin is on here and you you you don't have the the ability to look in and see this but this is the linkage that actually goes from the door handle where you squeeze it here at the top and you see the movement that's what unlatches your door the lock when you turn the lock cylinder on the on the outside of your car it moves this little lever right here and up is locked down is unlocked what will happen is in many instances this handle may have gotten replaced this may have been put in misadjusted but until you get in a situation where the door is locked and somebody grabs the handle to open it the problem will not surface so you might go for a year after your handle was installed before you encounter this problem so what happens is and you won't be able to to see it from as what i do here but in locking the door latching the door closed like that it will open and close fine until it's in the lock position somebody tries to open it and it will not open so what will happen is you don't get enough movement here to unlock the door rather than taking radical moves at that point it's really really simple of course your door is going to be closed but you have to get your window down come in from the other side put your window down take a long screwdriver go in where the glass comes out so it'll be between your door panel and and the glass at the back edge and with the screwdriver you see the tip of it right there with your screwdriver all you have to do is get to this portion of it right here you can see my finger and push down on it while trying to unlock it it just unlocked you can now open your door it's that simple you just have to have the patience and not panic when this happens to go in do that gently what you're after is this little tab right here and as you push down and kind of finagle the key it'll unlock and your problem is solved and in as much as getting into your car still need to fix the problem so now that you've got the door open it isn't going to occur again until you get in a situation where it's locked you try to unlock it it starts the sequence there so you can still drive the car home get in and out of the car at your earliest convenience you want to take your inside door panel off get in take this rod loose which i have already removed the little clip that goes on there for the sake of this video slide that clip back take this out you see it spring back up because it was under tension what you want to do then is just shorten this rod and even though they're fine threads it takes quite a few turns to get it shortened you're going to want to shorten it to the point that when it goes in it is not putting any tension i see here where i kind of have to push it to get it to fit too tight you'll have the same problem shorten it up a lot we're getting there get it in put it in a comfortable place put the clip on it put it back in you're good to go before you put it all back together test everything check it check it locked unlocked locked and trying to open it because you very well may need to take an extra one or two turns either direction so don't just go oh it's clear put it back together because you may still have the problem well that's it guys hopefully this has solved some problems for you and may be added to your bank of corvette knowledge if you get into it and you have a specific problem that we can help you with feel free to contact myself or lyle at the emails below if this video was helpful please like and subscribe it helps grow the community and we hope to see you again soon thanks for coming