Balisong

Hello. I have this gap near my door lock indicator.
What causes this? Am I missing a seal? And how do you fix this?


Thanks all!

No_snivelling

Hard to tell from the photo, but it looks like the door trim has a bulge right beside the lock ****. If that's the case, I have a theory.

Just the other day I noticed that when my lock **** is in the locked position, it descends too far into the bushing. The top of the **** goes down past the bottom of the bushing, at which point it goes off center. When you go to unlock the door, the **** can jam on the edge of the bushing which will push up on the bushing and the door trim. Possibly, with enough of this jamming and misalignment, it has deformed the trim? Like I said, its just a theory. But if you want to test the theory lock your doors with the key, electric and the rotary **** to see if the lock **** goes beyond the bushing in locked mode. Then see if goes off center.

LM964

Could somebody in the past have tried to 'lever' the **** up to unlock? Does look like that maybe a flat lever or screwdriver of some kind was used. Maybe the mechanism was stuck.

Balisong

Not sure. The car is in fantastic original condition but I do have a receipt from its past for new speakers.
Not sure if the top cap wasn’t reinstalled correctly when the door panel was reinstalled. It looks to me like the top cap is warped around the door lock button. Wondering if it should be removed again and gently heated with a heat gun to reshape it.

Metal Guru

Those top rails fail in various ways. That distortion around the lock hole is common.
The only fix is to find a NOS part to replace it, which will be difficult and expensive to do.

Balisong

Found out a new top rail (if you can find one) is $800. Looks like I’ll have to remove it and try to reshape it.

LM964

That is just plain ridiculous!