Rear doors will not unlock

JOURNEYWOMAN

MEMBER
2006 BUICK LUCERNE

Six cylinder front wheel drive Automatic 20,300 miles.

I live in Michigan. The car is kept in a garage. I did wash it last week.

On Sunday, the left rear passenger door handles quit working. They act like the door is locked inside and out. On Tuesday, today, the right rear door did the same.

I reset all the electronic lock settings on the DIC, tried the Onstar people who were clueless, as was a tech I called at the Buick dealer I purchased it from.

I am on vacation with the grand-kids who are climbing in and out through the front. I have visions of all the doors trapping us in or out of the car. I looked up a door lock relay which appeared to have six leads. Would one lead be used to unlock the door and another to activate the use of the handles? The stubs go up and down, but the door remains locked.

Any insight/help would be appreciated.

I will be happy to donate when I get home. I am on a restricted WIFI connection here.

2 Replies

MASTERTECHTIM

MECHANIC
4,750 POSTS

The doors have a child safety lock located on the inside of the door jam. When this is activated the doors will only open from the outside. Unfortunately it sounds like maybe this is the case and that is why they wont open from the inside. The reason they do not open from the outside is most likely caused by either being jammed or the linkage from the outside handles to the latch mechanism is disconnected. Is there any possibility of being frozen? Is the garage heated? Sorry I could not be of more help.

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Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 AT 3:02 PM

THOMPSONNAN

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I saw an old post regarding this issue and thought I could help. I had the same problem. At first it was one rear door and a few days later the other door would not open either. It is not related to door locks or child safety locks. I was told by my GM dealer that the door latches were rusted and corroded. Of course I was irate, how could this happen to both doors? Clearly it is a design flaw. I was quoted by GM $600.00 to repair the doors. Neither GM nor my extended warranty would cover the repair since it was classified as corrosion. I was told it was because the door latches were not lubricated and if I check the owners manual I would find it states that this should be done at every other oil change.

I escalated the issue to Buick customer care and then to GM and got nowhere. They were adamant about it being my fault for not lubricating door latches. I ended up having a local garage look at it (the owner had previously managed a GM dealership). He was able to fix the latches for $80.00 per door. We have always owned GM vehicles but after this I refuse to buy another. I hope this information will be helpful.

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Thursday, February 5th, 2009 AT 8:17 PM