Thread: Ghost opening passenger side door :evil:

Hey all,
I got a little bit of a problem.. Well more of a PITA problem.
My passenger side door keeps opening up on my 1995 cab chassis Defender. It aint to nice when it opens up doing 110 on the highway on the way to work at 6am in the morning. 8O
So I was wondering, how the hell (better sensor that one, incase the pommies ban me like the "see aust ad") do you fix it.
Im not sure if it is the actual lock itself or if it is the striker (i think thats what its called) on the actual cab.
I travel about 10km on some pretty crap dirt road everyday which vibrates the crap out of my car so i guess thats what brought this on.
The lock seems to hit the striker quite close to the outside edge of the pin. Ive tried everything from taping the striker up so its thicker, to welding the striker so its thicker.
The previous owner much of had the same problem as he has managed to strip the hex bolts holding the striker to the cab.
Any ideas?
thanks in advanced.
Nick

Hi there

You can adjust the striker, it'll stop opening for awhile. Then after a few times I found that didn't work at all. It got worse to the point of not closing at all. Locking the door from the inside seemed to work for awhile too. When it gets too much, you'll have to replace the actual locking mechanism in the door.

It cost about $120 or $130 for the drivers side. And to say I was shocked at the price! talk about cheap! Like i've paid $39 for a captive nut for the TD5 acoustice cover. Anyway, you'll need to remove the door panel and the plastic dust seal. Warning; the next part is a pain in the a hole. You need to wind down the window and lift out the glass locater channel from the upright part of the door at your shoulder end of the door, this enables the glass to come out. From memory you then need to remove the glass out of the door enough so that you can unscrew the last of the screws that hold the lock mechanism in place. It's all pretty straight forward from then on. It took me about 2 hours all up. Once I figured the glass needed to come out it's alright, just fiddly.

Ben '00 cc130