2011 Lexus ES350 Front Driver Side Door Lock Actuator DIY Solutions BSS00059

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

To remove this, take a plastic prying tool. You can get this from 1AAuto.com. Just kind of push in on this side. It'll pop it out. There's a clip there that you're trying to pop it out of. Push in the tab. We're going to pop off the piece behind the mirror. You're going to get your fingers in there or use a plastic trim tool. It just pops to the two clips. To pop off this grab handle here, use a plastic trim tool. Pry it up. Pop it out. Put that aside. Pull the door handle open. Use the plastic prying tool to get in here. Pop that out.

Use the plastic prying too to get this clip out. If you can get the middle up, that helps unlock it, but sometimes when they're flush like that, it's difficult. This one snapped, but it'll still work. I'm going to use a Phillips head screwdriver to remove the one that’s behind the door handle. There's one in here and one deep in here.

With these screws removed, the door panel is clipped around this edge and then it's going to lift off of the door frame. So I'm going to reach under here and pull it out. Do the same on this side. It’s free. Just be careful. The screws are in there so one just fell out. Put that aside. You disconnect the door handles. That's the door lock. Pop this out. Pull it straight up. Same thing with this one. Pop it out. This whole piece actually came with it. That's fine. I guess that can stay in there. Disconnect the main harness from the door panel. It's clipped up here. There's a lock that's on the other side. Push it in. Pull it down. Door panel will come off. Pop this out. Pull it right off. Put that aside.

To get to this door lock actuator, we have to remove the vapor barrier that's in the door. It's stuck on with this Butyl tape. It's really sticky. You probably want to put gloves on because it just gets everywhere but you can peel it away and take a razor blade and just sort of cut it. This stuff is so sticky that if you're careful you should be able to stick this back up and reuse the vapor barrier. Try not to pull too hard or stretch it.

If you just need to access the door lock actuator or the inside of the outer door lock handle, you could just peel it down halfway. Since we're going to also access other stuff inside this door I'm going to take the vapor barrier totally off. This wire harness for the door goes through the vapor barrier. It's taped to this mount so you could either cut it and retape it so it's actually easier just to untape it and pull it off. Need to unplug this from here. Use the plastic trim tool to reach in there, push the lock in and just kind of pull it out.

Disconnect the speaker plug and push the lock in, up. You can either cut this and rezip-tie it or try to push it out with a trim tool. I'll try to push it out. Pop that out. Unplug the mirror connector. Now I can keep taking this off, slide the harness up and through. Keep removing the vapor barrier. You can reuse this, just be careful with it. Go lay it down sticky side up.

Inside the door panel there's a gray clip here. You see it if you go out this way. So inside the door panel is a gray clip here on the control rod. When this actuates, it moves. This is what happens, when you pull the door handle—this is what unlocks the door. I'm just going to reach up with my finger and pop that off. Pull the lock rod straight out. All right, so it's in there pretty well. I'm just going to slide up our little trim tool, and just kind of just gently pry on it to pop it out. Just like that. And it's go a ball end to it right there, and that's what made it hard to come out so you just have to get it over that and you're all set.

You disconnect the electrical connector from the door lock actuator, just pushing it in with the plastic trim tool and just gently pulling on it to undo it. With the electrical harness disconnected and the control rod disconnected to the door handle, I'm going to take a T30 Torx and loosen these bolts that are holding in the door lock actuator. You just have to feed it out from inside the door. It's got to go around the window regulator track. And that'll just guide it right out, and here's our door lock actuator.

Here's our original door lock actuator from our vehicle, and here's our brand new one from 1aauto.com. It doesn't have any of the control cables, so we'll have to swap those over. But it is similar in design. It's got the spot for the door lock, the actual keyed lock will go into here. Has the spots for the control rod that goes up to the door handle. Has the spots for the cables, and I'll show you how to swap those over now.

So this control rod here simply slides out, and slides back into the new one. Get this cable here, and pull out of this and slide it out of there and over to the new one, Side it down in, and pop it in place. We'll need a small flat-bladed screwdriver to open up this door here. Take a small flat-bladed screwdriver to pry open the locks that are in here. Push this cable up, and unhook it.

Take our original cable, slide it in down, lock in place, push this back over, lock it, and this is ready to go back in the car. We need to maneuver the door lock actuator back into the door. It's going to sit up in here. You have to make sure that the lock cylinder, the connecting part that goes in here. That actually turns this to unlock it. It needs to slide into there, so it's got this nice open area and it's a rod that sticks out this way and then kind of goes in here.

So you're going to have to feed it up and kind of turn it into place, and then plug this into the door handle so that the door handle opens this. I'm going to go in from the bottom, and there is a window channel that I have to kind of wiggle it around. I might have to actually turn it outwards a bit and feed it behind the window channel. Fiddle with it a bit to get it behind the window run channel. Then we're going to lift it up in position. Pull these out and then I can, I'm going to flip it sort of toward the back of the car, the top to the back.

Reinstalling the door lock cylinder, you can get it out without removing the outer door lock. Have to push this rubber plug out. But it's a bit tricky to get the little drive I guess lined up for the door lock cylinder to turn the actuator. This is a captured bolt, it's a T25 Torx. I'm going to loosen it up. We're going to pry this cap off using some plastic trim tools. You can get these from 1A Auto. Just pop it up and off.

You can pull the lock cylinder straight out.

So trying to get the actuator to match up with this. It’s a little difficult, so I'm going to put the actuator in place and then I will slide this in afterwards. So without that lock cylinder and control piece in the way, I can slide this up into place. I'm getting this lined up in the little opening here, I've got it lined up with the bolt holes nice and easily.

Reinstall those T30 Torx bolts. You're going to tighten these up. This is going to go straight in, and it's going to line right up in those little splines. Just check it, make sure it turns. Reinstall this little cap—it's going to go over the notches there. Switch back to the T25 Torx and tighten this bolt back up to hold the lock cylinder in place. Push the rubber plug back into place. So up in here is this gray clip. This rod needs to go into the gray clip. Push into place and then we're going to pull this clip down and lock it so it can't come out. So that rod connected, that's what works the door handle and pulls on the door lock actuator.

Before we put the vapor barrier back on, you can plug in the harness for the door lock actuator. Now you can reinstall the vapor barrier. This black stuff that looks like silicone is actually Butyl tape, it stays sticky for like a long time, so we can reuse this. If you need to, you can get more. It's called Butyl tape but this stuff should be fine. It's very, very sticky.

I'm going to feed these wires through here and sort of let that hang a little bit. There's another opening here that our harness needs to come through and to feel all of the connectors through here to actually make sure our window is unplugged because that needs to come through. Feed all these through. Just going to get this lined up in relatively the same spot and just push it down with your fingers. You'll feel it, it's really like gummy and sticky. Definitely want to be wearing gloves or else you'll have this all over your hands for a couple days.

This harness was taped here so you can either re-tape it or zip-tie it. I'm just going to plug it in first, plug our speaker in. This was clipped in up here for our mirror, I'm going to run that back into the clip, plug our mirror back in.

For our courtesy light, there's an opening in the bottom of the door panel for it. Just feed that through. A little trick to install this: get that started.

Take your door harness. Don't forget to plug that in or else nothing's going to work. It'll snap into place, so get this lined up. It's got a couple pins on the top and the bottom and those are going to push into these tabs.

Now we take the door panel and kind of push it up towards the window. Push it up towards the window and then down over. Sometimes you’ve got to push in on it. Just push down just like that. I can see the screw holes are lining up. I've got that where I want it. I'm just going to push in. That’s just going to capture all the clips.

I can reinstall the screws and install this small screw here behind the door handle. Our little trim piece has got all the clips. Pull this door handle out and get this front one captured first. Push that in place. There's two large self-tapping screws. One's going to go in the top. One's going to go in the bottom here in this door pull handle. Start with the top on. With two screws installed, we can clip this back into place.

Install our little triangle piece that goes near the mirror. These two clips are here. Push right into place. There's this little clip here. This one kind of broke, but we push it in there. If you don't have it, it's not a big deal. It doesn't do too much. The rest of the door panel is secure.

To reinstall the courtesy light and plug it back in. Push that up into place. The door panel's reinstalled.

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