Volvo Repair: Stuck Rear Door on 81 Volvo 240 Wagon, volvo 240 wagon, automatic door locks

Question
Hello Regis,

My question regards a stuck rear passenger door on my 1981 Volvo 240 Station Wagon (222K mi). This is not the tailgate, but the door behind the driver. It appears to have come standard with automatic door locks, but the unit was disabled somewhere along the line. At first, I could not pull up the lock knob, and assumed that the electric actuator for the automatic door lock was jammed or holding it in the down and locked position. Finally, I got the lock knob to work, but the door still would not open. When I learned that the automatic door locks had been disabled, I then tried to access the door lever mechanism through the armrest holes in the door panels.

Once inside the door, I learned that the horizontal connector bar between the door lever and the latching mechanism had come loose at the latching mechanism. In time, I was able to reconnect the horizontal bar and move the door lever to the open (rear) position, but this failed to open the door. Then I used a tool to manually push back (or depress) the door opening lever on the latching mechanism, but this also failed to open the door. Although it was hard to see exactly what I was doing, I was quite sure that I was moving the correct lever on the latching mechanism.

It appears now that my only alternative would be to destroy the interior door panel to get better access to the latching mechanism, but I don't want to do that (for obvious reasons). However, looking at the latching mechanism from the rear door that still works, I noticed a small, mostly inaccessible lever that pivots in a "C" shaped opening, which seemed to disable the lock/unlock mechanism. Is this some sort of Child Safety device? Could it be that that's what's keeping my other door terminally locked? Any advice you could give would be greatly appreciated. I'm getting close to wrecking the door just to get it open, off the car, and replaced with something from a parts car! Thanks in advance.

Lance


Answer
you could try moving the little lever you speal of that moves in a C shape this is a child lock.this may be keeping it from opening from the inside.if this does not help you will need to remove the paenl to access the lock this should be able to be done without damaging it.