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  #11  
Old 01-22-2019, 02:13 PM
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Best cheapest deicer I know - winter windshield fluid.
In the winter, I put a spray bottle of it inside the cars.

Using inside a keyhole may be different story....but works great to deice a windhshield instead of scraping or waiting for the heat to work to scrape
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  #12  
Old 01-23-2019, 05:58 PM
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hahahaha.. this happened to me on Monday WITH a recently new door carrier installed... was able to open the door but couldn't close it. it just banged and bounced off. At this point while warming her up, I decided to try and lock the truck with the alarm and although that was successful it still had some play. At that point I was able to pull in the door and viola.. closed.. BUT, could not exist from the driver side.. I had to shimmy my big frame to the passenger side... in short, I had to laugh it up... Did I mention my window (with new BMW regulator) wouldn't not budge for shit because of it being frozen.

I have some new DC's that I will shave off that stopper... appreciate the heads up.
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  #13  
Old 01-23-2019, 07:24 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by andrewwynn View Post
Pre treat the door seal with windshield ice spray when the temp transitions from above to below freezing and the door won't freeze.

The door latch you can remove the plug for accessing the DHC screw and spray the anti-freeze in there to help prevent the self-destruct button from engaging.

The only real fix is to saw off the self destruct button.




The arrow points to the "self destruct" button. Its job is to prevent lifting the handle when locked however the problem is when you unlock the door the self destruct tab will remain in the locked position due to gummy lubricant and a very gentle spring.



Saw that bastard off and your door handle never locks anymore. Just like "every other car on earth" it will pull up freely "dry fire" when the door is locked but you'll no longer put significant stress on the hinge if the door seal is frozen and you can unlatch the door and have some hope of opening a frozen door.

The onky real workaround to X5 frozen door handle problem is enter through the tailgate.

If the windows aren't frozen you can roll down from outside and use the inside door handle.


I'm not understating the"dry fire" part.

When my doors are locked I can still pull my door handles. You mean if you shave off the piece it won't allow the handle to move when locked?


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  #14  
Old 01-23-2019, 07:36 PM
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I had wife's driver door handle stick up when frozen and like you described wouldn't latch then after a couple slams it stayed shut then wouldn't open.

I suspect the Bowden cable got a little water in and stuck in the up position. The latch was just redone and there is almost no grease on that nothing to get gummy.

I'm about to repair the passenger side actuator so plan to do a little Discovery. Maybe I'll put the actuator and dhc in the freezer and figure out what the hell is actually happening.

I was not able to un-freeze through the side hole and de-ice not down the lock button only running the car and cabin heat warmed up the DHC/cable and it suddenly started working again.

With no moisture it should never freeze so maybe some wd-40 inside the Bowden cable to displace any water.
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  #15  
Old 01-23-2019, 07:42 PM
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Frozen door latches

Quote:
Originally Posted by mr_robot View Post
I'm not understating the"dry fire" part.

When my doors are locked I can still pull my door handles. You mean if you shave off the piece it won't allow the handle to move when locked?


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Dry fire means you pull on it and nothing happens. The door handle will lift but the latch is disconnected internally so it doesn't engage or do anything.

Pay more attention to how the handle works when locked: you can only lift about 1/2 way and it's held back.

It's the opposite of what you describe. As designed, the self destruct button blocks the handle from lifting when the door is locked. It causes a tremendous amount of force on the hinge and is responsible for nearly all DHC failure.

Case in point: today when I pulled hard enough to break wife's DHC today and though It was icy enough to stick up it did not break I just had to wait until it warmed up and it came right back to life.

When the self destruct button is removed, you can lift the door handle 100% of the way but it will have no resistance as it's disconnected from the door latch .
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  #16  
Old 01-23-2019, 10:06 PM
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Huge huge HUGE Discovery! I found exactly where the latch freezes up and will work out a good how to preventive freeze solution.



That's in the latched position



This is with the door handle pulled up.

Notice the shiny spot in the middle below the part that just moved. That is WATER.

The rivet that holds those parts together is perfectly flat into that puddle of water and it's about 12mm wide. When that freezes it's good for 100# of force. When I was able to pull mine this am and break it free from the ice there was enough ice film it probably just sublime and re froze. The problem is water from window will re-wet that spot unless something is done. I'm working on a method to shed water from above and/or introduce a gap so the rivet doesn't actually touch the metal there.

In addition, if you remove the lock cylinder (Or blank from passenger side) you can get directly to that spot so if you have a frozen door, open from inside before you stick the door open or shut, remove the cylinder and spray some deicer right on the frozen spot without taking off the inside door panel.
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  #17  
Old 01-23-2019, 11:36 PM
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Wow some excellent detective work there!
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  #18  
Old 01-23-2019, 11:38 PM
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I peeled back half the moisture barrier and screwed the air bag to one of the door panel mounts so I could see the while inside too to bottom. I was able to remove both actuator and DHC while still attached and attached to the inside door handle cable.
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  #19  
Old 01-23-2019, 11:39 PM
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Yeah Andrew always digs up the info, although this is one of the few things that I don't have to worry about

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  #20  
Old 01-24-2019, 12:41 AM
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Frozen door latches

So update: Absolutely identified the Problem. I threw the actuator in the freezer for half an hour and I could not release the latch. In addition I caught the self destruct button slooooowly moving from destruct to safe mode on video.

I was able to get it to release with one shot of deicer and now it's re freezing and im going to attempt to de-ice with a lighter (I would recommend others use a heat gun or hair dryer).

If you heat the inside of the latch with a heat gun you will be able to get your latch working pretty quickly. The rivets that hold the metal that freezes are on either side of the latch opening.
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Last edited by andrewwynn; 01-24-2019 at 12:53 AM.
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