Door latch repair....., The importance of maintenance Options

[billh1963]

This is old news to those who have been around 914's for a while. But, for the newer owners this might be useful:

Decided today was a good day to fix 914 door latches. Two cars had inoperative passenger outside door latches and the drivers door on one of them was getting harder to open. I knew at that rate it wouldn't be long and I would be locked out of the car!

Did the normal research (thread searches, reviewed the procedures in the Porsche workshop manual, etc) and figured I knew what to do. The plan was to replace the plastic cam pieces (I had purchased four new ones a couple of months ago) and clean/degrease the latch assemblies.

The first door I tackled (inoperative outside latch on passenger door) had a broken cam as suspected. The cam was black. Isn't that a replacement unit? The latch mechanism inside the door was very grungy. Experimentation between purple power, simply green , gunk engine degreaser and brake cleaner showed that the best results were obtained by spraying the mechanism with gunk engine degreaser (gel) and letting it sit for 15-20 minutes. Rinse off and follow up with brake cleaner. YMMV. I sprayed the moving pieces with white lihium grease before reassembly. I cannot explain how nicely the door operates now. Just a slight pull on the door handle and the door pops open.

The second door was the "good" drivers door. The cam looks to be original (white plastic) and in perfect shape. The door mechanism was very dirty and operated sluggishly. A good cleaning and the door now pops open with a light pull.

The main purpose of this post is a warning on what was found on the other car. On that car the passenger door was not opening with the outside handle and it took a lot of effort to open the drivers door with the outside handle. On both doors, the cam had deformed from all the pressure exerted trying to activate the sticking latch mechanism. The picture below is the drivers door. The passenger door cam was deformed even further and would not push the latch. If I had waited much longer I would have been "locked" out of the car!





I replaced the cams and after a thorough cleaning of the latch mechanisms (and new grease) the doors operate like new. This is a really simple project and I did four doors in about 3.5 hours. That was taking my time and doing other stuff while waiting for the degreaser to work.

So, if your door latches are sticking, don't put off this project. It's easy and very rewarding!