[Vwdiesel] Door stuck-followup

[Mike & Coreen Smith]

To follow up on a stuck front door, 88 Jetta.  I had to dream this up myself
as I never found any help on the Net or userlists (sorry!)

In case any of you find yourself in this predicament for a stuck-shut front
door. (may work for a rear door, I never looked at  those latches.yet)
Open the rear door.  Reach in between the two doors with the rear door about
1/2-ways open.  With a stiff rod (no jokes please) in the shape of an "L".
(About 6" long x 2" long worked for me.  It's the small part of the "L"
that'll do the work for you.)
Find the small hole in the botton of the latch assembly and push the small
part of the L up in and to the right, fishing around a little and pulling
back a tiny bit.  Having a friend pull and push on the stuck front door a
little will help, but I suppose it "is" possible to do it yourself, but a
little trickier, with one hand running the "L-pick"---Voila! the door will
hopefully open.

I played around with my "new" junkyard latch @ coffeebreak time and the
latch will open regardless of whether the latch is locked or not.  At
lunchtime, a coworker and I had to door open, and new latch installed in
under 15 minutes.  If you have a replacement latch in your hand to
re-install like I did, it's easy to see how this all works. You can be very
sloppy in your "picking" and it will open for you.  My latch was in poor
shape and it still worked !   My "original" latch assy was toast and had
been deteriorating for quite some time, with both "latch" and "lock"
mechanisms going downhill and ending up getting to be quite useless. Just
worn, broken, bent and a bit dirty.

Good luck !