Well, I had to replace mine left central door lock actuator (LHD) recently, and as Nuno said in the beginning of the thread - not an easy job. Actually, very difficult job to do.
After some research, it turns out the original door actuators are actually pretty cheap vietnamese pieces of sh** and eventually fail one by one. Ebay is full with replacements, it's the same part for Acura TSX, Odyssey and others, didn't even cross my mind to contact the stealership about this part..
There are some good videos about changing the door actuators (search for Acura TSX door actuator), basically after removing the door card, you need to disconnect all wires and the window guide, these steps are relatively easy and don't require some special skills. Here comes hell:
- removal of the rod which connects to the door handle (not easy, but doable, remove it from the central lock unit and NOT from the door handle, this is much easier)
- removal of the rod which connects to the door lock - very difficult, actually had to break the little plastic which holds the rod in place, I didn't find another way of removing this
Then, you can remove the whole lock with the actuator from the door and replace the actuator, this is clearly shown on the youtube tutorials, no rocket science here as well.
Aaaaaaaand, again, connecting the long rod to the door lock is hard as .., had to glue the plastic and push it with a big screwdriver to clip in. Also, wasn't sure if it will hold up in place after I slam the door, so put a zip tie around it, just in case.
I'm not sure I've explained this quite well. To summarize, you'll need:
- 1.5 hour
- small fingers
- flashlight
- philips screwdriver
- 10mm spanner for the window guide
- impact screwdriver for the three screws which hold the door lock, you might get away with normal, though
- a lot of patience and strong nerves
Once again, everything except removing and re-***embling these stupid rods isn't that hard. I will be replacing my right one soon, so I will post some pictures.
cheers,
Alex
