Hello Everyone! I had plans on doing this for quite a while ever since the actuator started acting up during this past summer.
Symptoms: I noticed this one day when my tail lights and city lights stopped blinking when I would lock the car. Also the horn did not sound. I thought it was a fault that would eventually correct itself. Eventually the lock stopped unlocking/locking; it only made a quiet 'attempt' to unlock or lock.
I started to do that thing where one would crawl into the trunk space to access that small plastic window to access the lock. I've been doing this for months now.
This write-up will show you what you need to do to access the actuator. I decided to write this up too since I had a camera nearby.
Tools Required:
Phillips Screwdriver
Flathead Screwdriver
The will to accept potential ratting from removing these panels (if you haven't done so already)
1. First, begin by accessing your trunk. Remove the privacy Trunk Lid if necessary. There will be two hooks, one on each side with a panel revealing one screw each. Remove both of those screws.
2. Next, use your flathead screwdriver to gently pry at the side trims. The clip locations are shown below. Once you are finished with this step, you will have removed four clips and one screw for each side.
3. Removal of these side pieces involve working with the end closest to the top of the hatch first. Once you get that end loose, the rest of the trim will follow.
4. The next step is to remove the plastic piece right behind the rear end of the car. Highlighted in yellow, the arrows indicate the tabs that require the prying of a flathead screwdriver. Do not forget to remove the screw located within the inner handle of the trunk as circled in the photo. Highlighted in red, the arrows indicate the tabs of the trunk piece that requires the force of pushing. Once you remove the tabs labeled in yellow, you will have to work the plastic off the rest of the tabs by pushing the piece towards the vehicle.
5. Once you have all your plastic pieces off, you now have access to your actuator. Remove the two golden screws marked with solid red arrows and remove the two plugs.
The yellow arrow is the lock switch one would use as a manual switch. Solid red arrows indicate the location of where the gold screws should be. The vertical oval shows the mechanism that is switched from lock to unlock using either the manual switch or the actuator switch circled in the horizontal oval. With the actuator missing, you now have a trunk that can only be manually controlled, which is fine in my case.
I stopped here because I did not have an actual replacement actuator to finish the job. However I did proceed to disassemble the actuator itself. Photos will be provided below for those who are interested:
The actual cover of this part is glued on there. I pried it apart starting my prying at the connector portion of the mechanism. Doing this pretty much breaks it open and requires a strong glue of some sort if one were to have effectively repaired this part.
The top plug goes to the motor that spins as signal is sent to the actuator. The screw motion moves the spring-loaded gear that moves the arm on the bottom. The spring then makes the gear move back to its original position. In my case after testing it while opened up, the motor still works but has lost most of its power.
I hope this DIY helps. Good luck!
Credit for this goes to dstanced from Clubrsx
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