I fixed my door lock actuator a month ago.
Took pictures and wanted to do a how-to
but
Davebert got ahead of me
At least I will post some of my pics and my experience.
First I found this thread
http://www.mazdas247.com/forum/showthread.php?123821382-Driver-Door-Lock-Actuator-Motor-Fix
Which proved that it the actuator can be fixed by simply replacing the motor.
It is worth doing it for the front doors since the price of the actuator is more than 160$
Then I found the current thread started by
a10thunder which gave me idea how to open the door.
I read that the actuator itself is 40-60$, but hey if it can be fixed for less, why not
I ordered from ebay.com "20mm Long Shaft Car Door Lock Actuator Motor Repair For Lexus Toyota Mabuchi" from seller "mhestore2009" for 5$
Here's the link
https://www.ebay.com (commissions earned)
I ordered the motor with the longer shaft, just to be safe - it is easier to cut the shaft if I needed 10mm, than making it longer if I needed 20mm
3 weeks later I had the motor.
Removed the actuator from the door.
I don't know how
Davebert did cut the actuator that nice, clean and straight
my praise to you.
Here's how I did it:
Hacking it hard with the Dremel
Here it is opened:
Here it can be seen that the upper connector is a microswitch - it is used in my Mazda 5, because it is equipped with the factory OEM Alarm System. So this connector and the switch, tells the ECU that the door is being opened and the horn starts beeping.
Here's the original motor in place
And here's the shaft of the original motor:
It is not round like the new motor that I purchased.
The two motors together - upper one is the burnt out original, and the lower is the new one
Again I used the Dremel to make the shaft the same - with the slot.
Replaced the motor.
Since reading a lot of threads of repairing these actuators(from Lexus forums), it turned out that closing the actuator is the tricky part. I read a person that glued the two halves a little loose and the plastic worm part got stuck with the big white wheel (I am sorry if I don't use the right words, I am not a native english speaker
) and he had really hard time unlocking the door.
So I decided to close the actuator mechanically
with two screws without any glue. This leaves future opening quite easy and the closing to be monitored (so the halves don't get too tight to each other, since my diamond cut wheel on the dremel is really thick)
These two screws prove to be sufficient:
One is a bolt with a nut, and the other one is self tapper screw.
Here they are on the other side:
I have been using it on a daily basis for the last month and it works like new
I plan on ordering one more motor for the other sliding door, since now I hear it unlocks the door a few milliseconds later than the new one
and perhaps it will give way in the next months.
Cheers,
sorry if it is too long, but wanted to share what I initially planned to do as a how-to