When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
HOWTO: Install universal door lock actuators. Front and Rear.
What's up guys,
Following up from 95maxrider's awesome door lock actuator thread. So My '99 developed an issue wherein all of the locks would only lock / unlock halfway. The problem got worse with the cold weather, to the point where the rear passenger side door wouldn't unlock at all. I got tired of reaching around to manually lock all of the doors before exiting the car, so I decided to do something about it.
I figured the actuators were failing - no problem, right? I'll just grab some from RockAuto. Well, I soon found out that the prices for our actuators have become ridiculous. The cheapest prices for the rears were about $150 each, and the fronts were about $85 each, while the 5th gen actuators are about $10-$15 each. I didn't want to take the chance on a used JY / ebay part, so I began to look at other options. I found a set of four universal actuators on amazon for $13 shipped, and I took a chance. What's the worst that can happen, right? if they didn't work well, I was only out $13. Link to the actuators I purchased is here:
They arrived a few days ago and I began the project. I started with the rear d/side door. The universal actuators came with no instructions of any kind. Thankfully, the install for these things is fairly straightforward, and I'll do my best to recap what I did. If you can install a radio / amp, you can definitely do this.
1) First, you need to remove the rear door panel. If you've never done this before, here is a video tutorial, thanks to pmohr:
Once you have the panel off, you'll be looking at this (I removed the factory plastic moisture barrier):
2) The actuator is hidden behind the door frame. You can see its harness through the hole near the seat. I removed the harness by pushing a flathead screwdriver through the hole, to release the clip. Then I used a second screwdriver to pry the harness out while pressing on the clip with the 1st screwdriver. Once I had the harness out, I bolted the actuator into this spot. To get this to work, I had to break the mounting bracket that it came with. This is a great spot for the actuator, because you don't have to drill any new holes in the door frame. You can attach it to the existing bolts in a V orientation:
3) On the factory harness, the wires that you'll want to tap into are the brown / white and solid brown. Connect the brown/white to green, and the solid brown to the blue wire of your universal actuator. The blue wiretaps work great for this
4) Once the wires were tapped, I plugged the harness back into the OEM actuator. This was not even necessary, because the universal actuators are more than sufficient to push / pull the rods, but I insulated the taps with electrical tape and reconnected it anyway. Once your wiring is done, you'll need to connect the universal rod to the factory rod. I bent it into this shape, fed it through the actuator, and connected it to the factory rod with the supplied clamp and screws. **IMPORTANT** - before you bolt the new rod in, make sure that the orientation is correct - if the lock is OPEN, you want the new actuator to be EXTENDED. if the lock is closed, you want the actuator to be fully retracted. I added some blue Loctite to the clamp threads as well, in the event that the screws somehow loosen up over time.
5 (optional) While I had the panel off, I decided to add some speakers to the rear doors, to give my audio some rear fill. I had some coaxials that I had taken out of my previous car, so I decided to throw them in. Slipped a 6.5" Boom Mat baffle into the hole there to create a tighter seal and also to protect the speaker. I cut out the rear of the baffle to allow for airflow. Bolted the speaker up, wired up the crossover, and fed the input wire out of the existing door grommet, and down through the B pillar into the car. adding the rear speakers made a HUGE difference in sound! The rear speaker doesn't interfere with the operation of the window either, since our windows only go down halfway anyway.
6) I re attached the door panel, after using a 6" hole saw to create an opening for the sound to come through. I covered it with a grille that I spray painted. The paint dried lighter than the representation on the cap, but I was more concerned about function over form... I didn't really care about putting a hole in the panel, because the panel was already in rough shape anyway...
2) I chose this spot to mount the actuator. Before I screwed it in, I made sure that the panel would clip on properly without being obstructed by the actuator. It did, so there it went. Be sure to measure the new rod before you bolt it in place, because I had to clip off about 2 to 3" of it for this application. Once I had the correct length, I fed the rod through the actuator, pushed the rod through the clamp, and then I snapped the clamp onto the factory rod. Applied some loctite and screwed it down. Of course, I managed to lose one of the screws. There are supposed to be two screws securing the new clamp to the factory rod, and one screw securing the clamp to the new rod. It held fine with one screw, so I proceeded.
3) I already had some sound dampening material on my front doors, so I had to peel some of it back to access the wiring harness for the front actuator. It runs along the bottom of the door. I pulled it inside of my kilmat, and stripped away some of the plastic conduit to expose the wires. Same deal here as the rear, you want the brown / white and solid brown wires. Since the new actuator is at the top, and the wiring is at the bottom, I had to extend the wires. I crimped on some 14ga cable, wrapped it up, and ran it down to the factory harness. Used the blue wire taps again, wiring done!
4) Tested the new actuator, works perfectly! The lock snaps open and closed as if it were brand new. Video attached:
5) Wrapped everything up with tape, put some kilmat over the new actuator to help protect it (probably not necessary, but didn't hurt anything).
6) Once I confirmed everything was working correctly, I put the door panel back on. It snapped right back into place. No resistance or snags of any kind.
Well guys, the verdict is that these actuators are a definite hit for $13. I mean, that comes out to about $3.25 per door. So if anyone out there is in a similar position, I definitely recommend giving this a shot if you'd rather not drop about $500 on replacement bolt-on actuators. I hope that this thread can be helpful to some. Hopefully I didn't leave anything out. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.
No problem! I am glad that my repair was helpful to you. I figured that with our cars up there in age, many others out there may be dealing with this same issue, so I decided to document my repair. For $13 and a bit of your time, you can't go wrong here vs buying the original replacements.
Best of luck with your repair. Keep us posted - if you have any question, don't hesitate to reply back.
Hey CRiME, one question - how should I wire the actuators? Do I have to connect the blue/green to both old actuator harness and the car wires? Is it necessary to plug the harness back to the old actuator?
I am asking this since it looks like the old actuator harness got more than 2 wires connected to it. so if connecting the new actuator to the car wires - what about the rest of them wires on old harness?
Sorry I am a not so expert with wiring stuff.
You are correct, the harness that plugs into the factory actuators has four wires, while the universal actuators only have two. This is the only harness that you need to work with. I used my multimeter while pressing the master lock / unlock switch to determine that the wires that energize the actuators are the brown and brown/white wires. On my harness, these two wires were thicker than the other two - your harnesses should look the same as mine. When I plugged my multimeter into the brown / brown/white wires, I hit the master lock / unlock button and saw a brief -12v / +12v readout on my multimeter, confirming that these were the wires that I needed to use.
Connecting the green wire of the universal actuator to the brown/white stripe wire, and the blue wire to the solid brown wire yielded correct operation of the universal actuator; pressing the lock switch caused the actuator to retract, and pressing unlock caused it to extend. Be advised - when you are testing your new actuators, you have to reconnect the window switch for the side that you are working on, or hitting the master lock / unlock button will not send any power to the actuators. I thought my actuators were duds at first until I realized this!
For the rear doors, after I spliced the new actuators in, I reconnected the factory harness to the OEM actuators. I figured I would keep my Oem actuators connected in the event that one of my universal ones failed (at $13 for a set of four, I didn't know what to expect). In doing so, my new actuators are essentially working as boosters for the original ones. I have not had any ill effects so far, and everything is still working perfectly! I did not even have to unplug the OEM harness when doing the front, because the wires run along the bottom of the door and you have a good amount of slack there to work and install the wiretaps. So I left it connected, peeled open some of the OEM black plastic covering to expose the wires, and again tapped into the brown / brown/white wires. Note my picture for the front door, you will need to extend the wires on the universal actuators to reach the bottom of the door, so that you can tap into the brown / brown/white wires. To do so, I just used some regular 14 gauge wire (16 gauge will probably be better, the 14ga was a little thick for the crimp connections). I stripped back some of the insulation, plugged it into the crimp connections of the universal actuators, clamped it down with the pliers, slipped the clear insulator over the connection and then secured it again with electrical tape. I was then able to take the other end of the extended wire and use the blue wiretaps to connect it to the brown / brown/white wires down below.
When you are clamping down the blue wire taps, i used a small set of locking pliers to do so. I opened up the plastic tab, and used the pliers to squeeze the metal tab down. Once the connection was tight I snapped the plastic cover over the tab and wrapped the entire connection with electrical tape. I remember the first time I used wire taps, I snapped the plastic cover on first and then clamped it down with pliers. I finished the stereo install to find that nothing worked. I thought that the wire taps were junk, but I then realized that I was doing it incorrectly. I had no connection because the metal tab did not go down far enough to tap into the wire. Man was that frustrating!
If you've never used the wiretaps before, here is a quick video that shows you exactly what you want to do:
Best of luck with the project. I know that it looks like a lot, but just take your time. The process is definitely do-able! Apologies for the long post, I was just trying to be as detailed as possible in explaining what I did. Feel free to reply back with any further questions!
Thank man for the detailed explanation. I had hard time finding a good location for the actuator as it is a bit bulky - i guess will have to drill some holes.
Might give it a second chance tonight !
No problem. See if you can try the same locations that I used for mine. The back door didn't require any drilling, because there are two bolts that I was able to use (after snapping the bracket to align in that V shape). For the front actuator, I just used some self tapping sheet metal screws - they went right through the panel and held the actuator in place perfectly. If you can find a better location for the front that can use existing bolts, that will be even better. The metal rods that come with the actuators can be bent into just about any shape to facilitate installation, so you definitely have options in that regard.
Sounds good, keep us posted and again just take your time with it and I am sure you will get through just fine
So managed to position it and install it (i connected it with 14 gauge wire to the old actuator harness).
It seems as it was working, but then a weird noise started coming out of it (long grinding noise) and now it looks like it just died, as i cannot hear it working anymore.
Are they still working fine for you? anything you think i did wrong? i connected blue to brown and green to brown/white with 14 AWG wire using the blue snap locks. I also re-connected the old actuator harness back.
It looks as if you connected it correctly. Yes, mine are still working properly, I have not noticed any abnormalities yet. Which door was this? Are you still able to push the lock button manually, or are you feeling resistance as if the actuator is stuck / pushing back? It sounds as if this may just be a stroke of bad luck and you just happened to receive a defective part. I would try another actuator from the package. Keep your 14awg extension in place, just cut it at the point where it crimps onto the blue and green wires, and crimp on a new actuator. This way, you won't have to redo the snap locks. Let us know how the second one works out.
Thanks a lot for the quick response - it looks like the snap locks were not so good, so this is what i did:
Remove the snap locks
Split the harness wires
connect the wires from the car to new actuator only, and leave the one in the harness not connected (isolated them with tape and tied down).
All looks well now, hopefully it will hold well.
One advise i think should give to others is that the rod can be cut with wire stripper to the desired length.
Yes, that's something I didn't write in the initial post - the new rods are a fairly soft metal and I was also able to cut them with the wire stripper.
. So if anyone out there is in a similar position, I definitely recommend giving this a shot if you'd rather not drop about $500 on replacement bolt-on actuators. I hope that this thread can be helpful to some. Hopefully I didn't leave anything out. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.
