Car or Truck Door Locks Not Working - Replacing Door Lock Actuator - 07-13 Toyota Tundra

Welcome back guys. It's the Tightwad and today we are talking about door lock actuators. This is what goes in your door right behind here. You can see my existing one in there. And cables run from here down to the actuator and make your door lock and unlock. So I'll show you some of the symptoms that will let you know that your door lock actuator needs to be replaced. So my door is currently unlocked so I'm going to use the lock button here. You'll hear the other locks in the truck locking and unlocking and this one sits idle. So if I lock it and try the same thing nothing happens. So what actually happens is inside this door lock actuator there's a little motor and those motors go bad and that motor spins up one direction and spins down the other direction to lock and unlock the door. When that motor goes bad you have to replace either the motor itself which is very difficult to do or the whole door lock actuator assembly which is what I choose to do. I've already done this on both doors of my driver's side and I ordered my parts from Actuators Plus. The first time I ordered a part I actually ordered an aftermarket part from one of the online auto sailors. One of the biggest names in the business actually and I got the part in and it didn't look quite right. It fit where it was supposed to fit but two different parts on it didn't work correctly. Where the cables connected down here wasn't tight enough so the cables kept slipping out and where the clip clipped in is supposed to clip in right here didn't work either. So I had to return that part to that distributor and I found this company Actuators Plus on eBay and they sell OEM parts. So this actually came out of another tundra and they replaced the motor in it and then they resell them. The way they stay in business is they offer you a lifetime warranty on your replacement door lock actuator if you'll send them your actuator that's faulty. But they do the tedious and difficult work of replacing the motors inside these lock actuators. The first thing I like to do when replacing an actuator is to move this clip here to the down position. This way if you do not install everything correctly your door won't shut. If this is flipped the other way and you shut the door to your truck before you have everything hooked correctly you're going to be stuck because there's going to be no way to get your door back open. And I'll show you the part that this controls a little bit later but I like to go ahead and flip that down so I can't accidentally install anything incorrectly. Now we need to go ahead and start removing the trim on the door and every car is a little bit different. This is a 2007 to 2011 was when they changed the body style Toyota Tundra. But every car you just kind of have to work your way around and figure out how to get everything apart. On this one there is a little plastic cover that you remove from here and then there's a little padding in here that you remove. I need a phillips head screwdriver to remove the screw inside here and I'll set this to the side and then I need to remove a phillips head screw right here as well. And that's the only two screws holding this panel on. There's also a bunch of clips but that's the only two screws. So you do need your window to stay up during this process because you're going to be working down behind it. And the next thing before you start removing the door trim you need to remove this part as well. So this part you can sometimes get your fingers in here and just pop it off. It's just got clips in it and I just lift it up right here and it popped off and then there's a clip on the front I want to kind of be careful with so I'm going to wiggle it just a little bit and it exposes the back here. So this one has a push tab right here that I can push in with my finger and wiggle out and this one has a push tab right here on the front as well that I'll push down and it'll come out. So I'll just set this piece right here to the side. The first piece of trim I'm going to remove is this little triangle right here. It is just held on with clips so you can just get your fingers under it and pull it off. It's actually just this one white clip here. You'll see a bunch of these today and then a little tension clip right here as well. The next thing I have to remove is this little clip right here. It's the only one made this way but you take your tip of a screwdriver or something sharp and push in on it a little bit to release it and then you can pull it out with your fingers or a flathead screwdriver but I actually have a trim tool that I purchased. It's a good idea to have for this process and that helps pull it out. So you can see the button just pushed down into it and then it popped out. If you try to pry this off you're just going to break it every time. And with those two things done on this door I can start at the bottom and start popping off all of the clips that go all the way around. You can kind of do it by feel. Some of them may break but they're easy to buy new ones and replace them and this whole piece is just resting on the arm up here at the top. So I'm going to just start here at the bottom where I can get my fingers in and start pulling. You can kind of hear things popping free. Now with everything released, the top, the bottom, and all the clips released, I can lift up here. So with this off there you got to support it because there's a few things you have to unhook in the backside here. The first one is down here at the bottom and I'll show you after I get it unclipped. Up here at the top you have your two actuator cables. They go into your locks and they both pop off by lifting up and then just releasing the balls. And then the same thing with the bottom one. Mine was white on top, green on bottom. That's important to remember. So the cable I removed from the bottom is just a little clip that goes in this light cylinder right here and it has a little pressure clip. So I pushed in the pressure clip and slid it right out. The actuator clips went here and here. So this one just simply popped out of this slot here and then slid out of this groove right here. And then the other one pops in here and slides into this groove. So this is clear to be set to the side for the rest of the process. As I was showing you before, the actuator sits right here on the door and on this particular model there is a clip right here and I just need to pull in on the pressure part and pull this plug out. And then I'm going to go ahead and remove two of the screws and leave the top one loose so that I can remove it with my fingers later. And these are all Torx screws. So you definitely need the Torx wrench that fits. Most of them are going to be a T25 or T30 on most vehicles. So I'm going to leave this top one in for now to hold the actuator in place while I get the vapor barrier removed. So the vapor barrier has this really sticky tape. It kind of looks like tar, but I'm just going to peel it back. I don't need to remove the whole thing. I just need to remove it far enough for me to get my arms inside here. So I'm going to remove some of the top and some of the bottom on this side right here. These actuator cables are actually stuck through a cut that's in the vapor barrier. So I'm going to carefully pull those out. So on some vehicles there's a window track that the window goes down in right here in the way and that is the case on the front doors on the Tundra. So I'm going to go ahead and remove the screws holding the window track in place here. It feels like I actually only needed to remove these top two. So I'm going to go ahead and tighten this bottom one down. So with that window track loose, I should be able to easily get my actuator out now. And there you go. It looks just like the one that we removed since we're using the OEM. Even all the markings will be the same. We have our green cable that goes to the lime green one here and then our white cable that goes to the bottom piece right here. So let's get everything swapped over from this actuator to the new actuator and then we'll start reinstalling. So I'm going to open this and keep my thumb in there. Then I'm going to come back to the back try to pry those clips off. And once those clips pop, the door will open. Be careful with this because it will break along the little seams right here. And we are now ready to switch from one actuator to the other. So I'm going to lift up on the white piece here and take this little hook out and then I'm going to put it inside this piece here. And I'm going to clip it in place. And then I'm going to do the same thing here. I'm going to pull up on the highlighter yellow and lift the little cylinder out. And I'm going to put it back in place on this other one. And make sure that you get it clipped into the right location there. And this one actually did have the little clips broken but that's fine because those aren't what holds it together. That just keeps it from you from losing the cover. And it just snaps back into place and everything is held securely. So our new actuator is ready to go back into the door. Before we reinstall the actuator, I want to show you a step that some of you may be thinking that I skipped. And it has to do with this little metal rod that you see in the center of the screen. This metal rod right here has a plastic piece on the top right there. And you can unclip the plastic piece by pulling back towards yourself and this whole metal rod will come out. And you can go ahead and put it back into the new actuator before putting it back in here. But I have a hard time getting my hands up in there and working in that really tight area. So I choose to leave the metal rod in place and then I slide the bottom of the rod back into the clip on the actuator whenever I'm reinstalling it. And this is the step that people forget to do when they're reinstalling their actuator that keeps them from being able to open their door once it's closed. So I'm going to make sure that this gets into the right place on the actuator as I'm sliding the actuator back into the truck. And that will ensure that I'll be able to open my door. So on our actuator we have this little piece right here and the rod comes in from the top side. And this is the piece that people forget. That rod should slide straight down into this hole right here. If you don't get it into this hole then you're going to have a major issue if you ever shut your door because you will not be able to get it back open. So I'm going to go ahead and slide this actuator back into place and use my fingers to feel and guide the rod into this hole before I lock everything down. So the first step is to get it around the window track of course. And now I'm going to find that rod and find the piece that it's supposed to go into with my fingers and slide it in there. I can feel that it slid right in. Sometimes you get lucky and it happens the first time. The next thing I need to do is watch here and here to make sure everything's lining up correctly. This piece should be coming through the round hole and this piece should be lining up perfectly right here. And I'm going to leave the actuator sitting there while I grab my torque screws. And I don't want to tighten the torque screws down yet but I do want to go ahead and get them put into place because I want to make sure everything is right before I tighten anything down. I can go ahead and clip this back together and now I'm going to reach behind my actuator and make sure the metal rod is still in the piece that I slid it through. And I'm going to try to get that on camera for you. So you see our metal rod right here is through that metal clip and it is, I can't stress enough, it is very important that that metal rod is put back into place prior to closing your door. If you had to disconnect your window track you need to go ahead and get that hooked back up before you get any farther. You just have to wiggle it around until you get the screw holes lined up. I'm going to go ahead and finger tighten these and then tighten them down good with a wrench. They don't have to be super tight, just snug. Then I'm going to replace my vapor barrier here, making sure that my actuator cables are run through the vapor barrier before I put it down. And just smooth it all the way around. If for some reason yours won't stick back down you can buy this at any auto parts store. You can buy the adhesive, it's actually a tape. When replacing the actuator on any door that has a key lock there's an additional step that needs to take place and it starts by removing the plug from right here. You can use a screwdriver to pry this out. Some of them are flexible where you can just pinch them out with your finger but you need to just get this plug out. So on my door I know I can just pry it out with a screwdriver and it just looks like a little plug here. And inside this hole there is a screw that you need to loosen. It will not come all the way out, it is made to stay in place and it is a torx screw on most vehicles. With that screw loosened you should now be able to remove the key lock which reveals this long rod. On the actuator for keyed doors there's a part at the top with a cross in it. After your actuator is reinstalled you can then put this back in guiding it into that cross. So you can see that this piece here needs to line up with that cross down inside the hole. So it slides right in. You kind of have to work it into the cross and then you can tighten this part back down. With everything lined up it should fit nice and flush and then you can simply tighten this screw back down. So in short, remove this before you remove your actuator and don't put this back in until you have your actuator back in place and then your key will work properly. So our next step is to tighten these torx screws down and then and then start reassembling the door. You don't need to get them very tight at all, just snug. If you have a screwdriver you could use instead that's great. You do not want to bend the body from tightening these too hard. So our actuator is installed and good to go. I'm going to grab the door panel and put it back on. I'm going to try to go ahead and set it on the shelf here so that I can plug in our cord at the bottom that goes into the light. Then we have to get these two hooked up and then once we have all that done we'll be able to hook these two back in. One more thing is you'll notice that some of my clips are stuck in here. So I'm going to take my trim tool and pop these clips out because these are actually supposed to be in the door panel instead of in the door itself. And I see one there and one over here. So when I look at the door panel I can see there was one that was supposed to be here so I can slide it back into place. And then another one was supposed to be here so I'll slide it back into place also. These can be very fragile. You can buy replacements fairly easily at an automotive store, at your dealership, or even on eBay in bags of about a hundred of them or Amazon. So I'm going to start reassembling the door. The first step is I'm going to hang it on the top up here so that I can get this bottom clip put in place for the light. And you'll know it's done correctly when the light comes on. And now I can pull this back off. While supporting it with my knee I'm going to reconnect my cables. And my white one was on top and the green one was on the bottom. If your vapor barrier pulls away make sure you smooth it back down. Then I'm going to get it resting on the door here. So now it's time to reinstall this piece here. And you have to fish your cable ends out. And the big one goes on the main assembly. Small one goes on the other. You can't really do them backwards. And I'm not going to secure that yet until I get the door pushed back into place. So I'm going to make sure that it's settled on the top here. And then I should just be able to push all the clips back into place with a little shove. And now I can snap this back down. Before I go any farther and put any screws in I'm going to test my lock and unlock functions. And you can see that everything is functioning properly. Another thing I told you when we first started was to flip this piece down. Because if right now if I shut the door to my truck it's going to try to push this in and it's not going to allow the door to close. Because that piece is supposed to clip onto this right here. So it's going to bump into that and not allow my door to close. To test and see if I installed my actuator correctly with the non-electrical parts I just have to pull on the door handle here. And when I pull the door handle you'll see that piece flips up. And when that piece when that metal rod lifted it pulled this piece up. So I know that my door handle and the metal rod are in sync and going to work correctly. And it's now safe to shut the door of my truck. All right now that I know that everything is working properly I'm going to put my two screws back in here. So my silver one went up here by the door handle and then the black one went down in here. Put my little piece of padding back down in here. I need to reinstall this plate here. It just snaps into place. I can go ahead and install this one making sure the yellow lines up with the tab right here. And it should clip into place. And then I have this pressure sensitive screw here. I'm going to push it up a little bit and I'm going to pop it into place. And then the tab pushes down flush. So you can see it should not be pushed in. If it's pushed in it's going to fall back out. So it just pushes flush with it. And we are now done. This is a tedious process but it's not a hard process as long as you follow the steps step by step and make sure you do everything correctly. If you found this video helpful give it a thumbs up. Leave any questions you have in the comment section below and I'll do my best to answer them. Make sure you check out Actuators Plus on eBay if you need an actuator for your vehicle. Click any video showing on the screen right now and they'll open right up on your device. I hope you guys have a great day.