When locking the drivers door on my 73, do you rotate the key 90 degrees and remove it? Or does it have to go back to the vertical position?
My locks haven’t worked and just want to rule out the cylinder. I did find the actuator rod was bent and am in the process of straightening it and adjusting.
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Despite the parts book illustration I am not sure that connecting rod is supposed to be straight. The ones on my car each had a little bend which was necessary to clear another part of the lock assembly.
take a close look before you straighten something that might not need straightening.
BTW, The plastic pieces at both ends of the connecting rod are 1/2 of a ball and socket connection. Both are very tight and hard to release, the top one will try your patience. you really don’t want to remove that connecting rod unless you have to, because getting it back on is equally frustrating.
As for your key movement. The key moves 90° to one side to unlock and then returns to vertical, the key moves 90° to the other side to lock and then returns to vertical.
Larry
If you have a good spray silicon lubricant I would spray the inner pivot points.
for the lock cylinders themselves, you should only use powdered graphite or a lock-specific spray lubricant. Do a web search for a product called Houdini, not readily available but a lot of us have adopted it as a lock lubricant.
DO NOT spray WD-40 in your lock cylinders or on the pivot points. WD-40 is a petroleum product that will lubricate, but at the same time it will latch onto and retain every speck of dust that comes near it.
Larry
Also be careful not to screw the top knob down too far. I found that it was preventing the lock from fully locking.
Thanks guys. I now have a working lock, not that I’ll be parking in bad neighborhoods but it’s nice to know I can lock the car😀.
Yep there is a fine line between making that rod too short or too long. I found that a really small pair of channellok pliers makes it easier to pop the ball and socket together.
