OK, after taking it apart I believe the part of the DLA where the driver key cylinder sticks into was misaligned, preventing any of the door-locking functions from working. That's my best guess because I didn't fix anything and after taking it apart and reassembling it a few times it worked.



Now to try to steal some DLA bolts from elsewhere on the car since I won't have time to scour a junkyard for at least a couple of weeks. Hopefully they don't melt like butter like the others did. What a joke.



I think the worst part about this car is not that everything on it breaks all the time, it's that a simple job like replacing a door lock actuator (Pelican's website says "1 hour" and has only three steps) always takes 4x the time that it should on any other car. Always, guaranteed, simple jobs turn into ridiculous disasters. Here I am four hours later, almost the entire day wasted, and now I still have to visit a junkyard because BMW doesn't sell the bolts that are made of soft cheese and disintegrate.

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2003 3.0 5MT Topasblau
Purchased in 2016 and sold in 2024
2012 35d Platingrau