SOLVED: Window regulator fixed, now locks not working properly

[haigha]

Preamble: I’ve mentioned before that I have a mechanic friend who does most of the work for me. I’ve known him since 1989. He was the first BMW certified master tech in our city. He has been retired since the early 2000’s but continues to tinker with his classic car collection and helps close friends. I help him in areas where my talents are.

Problem: After fixing the left--driver’s for those with RHD-- front regular yesterday, the doors no longer unlock with the key or the center console locking button. The key works in the door. The door lock plunger seems to be at the same height as the others (level with the door when locked and about 1/2" above when unlocked).

We ran out of time yesterday, so we didn’t take the door panel off to investigate.

First question: Does the locking mechanism go through the window/mirror control module? After the repair the white connector is a little lose. When he pushed the module all the way back into the body panel, the window and mirror controls didn’t work except for the driver window. He fixed this using a shim on the side of the white connector. Now all the windows and both mirrors work. When we found out the door locks didn't work, we tried reseating the other two connectors.

While he has great talent removing and replacing components, he hasn’t done much work on X5’s. I think mine and one more. We didn’t have to replace any body clips, but had to learn how to do several parts as we went along, despite my prior research. *I* broke the LED light clip (only on some models?) on the inner door handle when we were removing the panel. We reattached that with some of the black sealant.

One thing we struggled with was getting the door handle latch reattached. It took about 10 minutes! Partly because we had already put the LED light on and there wasn’t much room to work with. When we got everything reassembled, the inside door handle now has no slack, compared to the other three which have a slight amount of slack. It feels different than I remember but seems to work fine. Any ideas as to why this could be and if it could be contributing to the problem?

Thanks!

Tip: We put the foam padding in a sunny spot for a few minutes to warm up the black glue. I had brought my heat gun, but this works better, if it's warm enough outside.