How to Replace Door Latch Lock Actuator 2013-18 Subaru Forester

Hey friends, it's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're working on a 2014 Subaru Forester. We're going to be doing the left front door latch assembly. It's going to be very easy. I want to be the guy that shows you how to do it. If you need any parts or instructional videos, you could always check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

All right. Here we go. We've got our door open. We're looking at our door panel. We're going to use a small pocket screwdriver or whatever you happen to have. Something small. Right here, there's a little flappy door. I'm just going to grab this. Pop it open behind there. There's a Phillips head screw located right there.

We're going to remove that. Let's take a Phillips head screwdriver, turning it counter clockwise, of course. Grab our little screw out of there. That's what it looks like.

We're going to use something like these. These are called trim tools. They're plastic, so you won't mar up any of your plastic door panel here. Feel along the bottom. Just make sure you don't feel any screws or anything like that that go in, hold it to the door itself. Feels pretty good. I'm just going to start along the bottom, going to use my door panel tools here. See if I can find where the little clips are. I feel like there's one right about there. There we go. Feels like it's getting tighter up here. Okay. Over to this side, same thing.

Feels pretty good. Okay. Just try shaking it around a little bit, it gets tight up here. All right.

While we're moving it around, feel like it's getting ready to come loose here. Try wiggling it. It feels as though there's something holding it in right here, so I'm just going to grab something. I'm going to try to pop this off real quick.

Okay. I got my pocket screwdriver again. Right here, there's a little slot, I'll show you it in a second here. Try to get that off. Right here is where I went, right in between there, and here. Just pulls out these little tabs.

Now we're going to find two more Phillips heads. One right there. One located down here. You can pick which one you want to remove first. You do you, booboo.

One, looks just like the first one. Going to grab this one. Three, just like the other two. Cool beans.

I'm going to grab our door panel, wiggle it around. It comes right up now. Behind here, there's going to be some wiring and some cables, so you just want to make sure you take a look and see what's going on before you go ahead and hang it. We're going to disconnect all we can. I'm going to take this white one right here. I'm going to try to remember the white goes up top. You can mark it if you need to, or whatever you need to do to remember, or just watch the video to see how it was removed and just reinstall it that way. Anyway, white one, pull it, going to take a peek.

It's just a little ball. Easy peasy. I'm going to go with the green. Just going to pull it out. Lift it. Let's keep on rolling. Down here should be a little push clip right in the center. There's the push right there. That's where I pushed on. There's one right here, going to try to push on that one. Here we are. Feel around the big one here. That one's probably on the other side. Let's see if I can find it.

I'm going to try to use a little pick. I'm going to push it on the center right here. I'll show you where I'm pushing. Subaru was nice and they put it in the back, where you can barely get to, but I'm going to just push right there and that unlocks this little clip right here.

All right, here we go. We've got our little vapor barrier here. Just going to try to pull this. This is all sticky goo right here. You get that on your hands, you get it on your arms, you get on your clothes, and it's going to be a sticky mess. Keep that in mind, okay? Go ahead and pull it off. Use your pocket screwdriver if you want to break it all free.

There we are. Cool. Stick it on there. Get this stuff on your clothes, make sure you don't put it in the washing machine. Your wife's going to get mad.

I'm going to take this little pocket screwdriver and push on the tab right here. Pull this out. There's my tab. We'll take a look. No funny colors. Looks pretty great. Set this aside. Right back behind here, I'm going to put the window up actually, because it's going to probably be in the way, but I'll put the window back up, and then we're going to go ahead and we're going to remove these screws right here. Just a Phillips head. Then we should be able to get this out of the way a little bit, hopefully out of the door, and we can take a peek at what's going on.

All right. Here we go. We're going to remove these three screws using our Phillips head screwdriver. Turning to the left. That's what one looks like. Leave that one in a little bit. Number two, the exact same as the first. Number three. Perfect. We'll set these aside.

Here we go. I'm just going to wiggle it around, see if I can make sure that everything's freed up under here. Back here. We've got one thing in here that I'm going to show you. It looks like right here, that's where the door lock is. There's a little yellow tab where my finger's pointing. I'm just going to take this, my finger, I'm going to flip up the yellow tab. See?

Now I'm going to try to grab the rod, pull it out of its little holding point. There it is. I'm going to see if I can get this moving again. It might be something else in there.

This right here is a 10 millimeter headed bolt. I'm just going to use my quarter inch ratchet. You can use whatever you have access to. 10 millimeter. What this is going to do, there's a window channel that comes down along here. It's where the window rides in, as it goes up and down. This is just going to make it so that channel can move around and I should be able to get this out.

I can move the channel around. Here we are, got our unit. There we are, easy peasy.

We got our little slot inside our vapor barrier. Just going to go ahead and put this through. I'm going to bring it down. We've got this, this can flop around. All right, I'm just going to go ahead and bring it down. Try and get it past my window channel there, and up to approximately where it's going to go to.

I'm going to grab my screws. Actually, I'll grab one of my screws now, just so it doesn't fall back down once I do finally get it up there. I'm just going to start one of these screws in. I'm not going to tighten it or anything like that. I just want to make it so I can release this. The locking arm, the piece that goes up like this, and then you got your little yellow clip that I showed you when we were removing it.

We've got our rod. This is our locking rod. In there is the yellow clip that we took off. All we're going to do is we're going to put the rod back in, and then we're going to slide that yellow clip, lock it in. I'm going to go ahead and grab the rod, slide it into its hole right there. Just slides right in. Boop. Take my clip, lock it down over the rod, and I'll give the rod a little tug. Feels pretty great.

Okay, so we've got our 10 millimeter here. We've got a couple more Phillips heads to put in. You can pick which one you want to do first. Doesn't really matter. I'm going to go ahead and do this one real quick.

Okay. I'm just going to take this 10 millimeter here. Start it in. I'm holding the window panel in here, or a window channel. We turn this to the right until it's tight. Just like that. It's bottomed out. Just give it a little bit. That's it. It's nice and tight now. We're going to come over here. We're going to put in the rest of our two screws, and then we'll go ahead and tighten them up.

All right, so I'm going to start this next screw in here. Not going to tighten any of these up until I get all three of them started. It's very important. Our last one. Just going to grab it. There we are. All three are started. Now we can go ahead and tighten them up. There's no specified torque specification for this, so just make it so it's snug. I'm going to do the same thing to all three, and then I'll just give them a little bit more snug. Snug, little bit, little bit, a little bit. Perfect.

We'll take this connector right here. We already checked it. We know there's no funny colors in there. It's not rusted or anything. We'll connect it right in. Now we're going to test it.

We're going to test this. Locked, unlocked, locked, unlocked. Perfect. This works great. Now we can continue putting our door panel back together.

Here we go. We'll put our vapor barrier on. I'm just going to stick it with the sticky goo. Like I said, if you get this on your clothes, be careful putting it in the washing machine and the dryer and all that. It's going to get on everything else, so think about that.

That feels good. We've got it stuck everywhere. We didn't take any of this apart, so there we go. Let's grab our door panel and we'll keep on moving.

Here we go. We've got some electrical connectors here. We're going to go ahead and connect all of these in, and then we're going to move along. We're going to connect in that one down there, and of course we're going to put in our little cables. Very important. You don't want to leave these off, because, yeah, good luck getting in.

Here we go. We've got one big one, that's going to go right down here in the bottom. Click. Got a couple of other ones here. Click. This one right here was up higher. Click, easy peasy. Cool. We'll do that electrical connector in one second down there. Just hang it, so it's ready to go.

I'm going to do these while I'm up here, and then I'm just going to set the door panel inside. It's a little thing, so I can get down under there.

Okay. We've got two cables, we've got our green cable. This one goes down to the handle. I'm going to go ahead and slide it in. Then I'm going to lock it into this little doohickey, boom. Right here, the top one. This is the lock cable. Just goes in, see if I can get it. Oops, you want to make sure the door's in the locked position here. It makes it easier to get the cable in.

There we are. I'm going to lock it in. There we are. Perfect. I'm just going to take the door panel. I'm just going to set it up on here. Now, I can let go for a second. We've got our cable right here, wiring harness, just going to go into the little light. Let me see if I can find it real quick. Yup.

Okay. Right here, this is going to go right in. let me see if I can find it again. I'll show you right where I am. The lock goes facing up, clicks in, easy peasy. Everything's in there. Cool.

All right, before I go ahead and clip this in, I'm just going to test it real quick. We're going to go ahead and unlock it. Now we're going to go ahead and lock it. That works perfect. Cool.

Now we'll say that it's, let's see, I'm going to go in and actually, because that's the door handle I'm going to be testing. I'll go in, and then I'm going to try to open the door. Cool. Now I'm going to try it again, but I'm going to lock it. Unlock. Perfect.

All right, let's get this door panel mounted in. Make sure it goes down. No binding. Goes back up. Love it. Door locks. Great. Oh. There we are, works. Works.

Here we go. We're going to test the mirror. Left side mirror. Looks good. All right, now we can go ahead and put the door panel on.

We'll make sure the door panel's pulled down fully. We tested everything. We're good to go. We made sure we plugged in this light down here. Definitely on, nice and bright. Somebody put in an LED, that's cool. There's little holes inside the door panel, or the door itself. That's where the pins from the door panel are going to sit into. You just take a peek, make sure you got them looking like they're pretty lined up. Start at the top.

Work your way around. Just give it a little bonk, bonk, bonk. It's my thing. There we are. Feels like maybe one more here.

We've got three screws. One here, there, and there. Theoretically we should have three screws left, and we do. We're going to go ahead and put these in. We're just going to start them in until we get all three started. One screw, two, three. Going to use our screwdriver. We're going to turn them in to the right. Like I said, I'm not going to tighten it down yet until I get all three of them started in.

It's very important in case you need to shift the door panel around at all. Line up the holes. Just going to help save you a little bit of time in the long run.

Here we are. This was the last one, so I'm just going to snug it right up. That feels good. This one, feels good. Last one, feels good. Close our little door here. Nice. We're going to put this on. That's this right here. It's got this right here. This goes down in there.

Once it's in, you just line everything up. Give a little squeeze. All right. Now, if you wanted to, you can go ahead and clean it down. Get off any fingerprints you might've put on there. Or leave them, whatever you did.

Thanks for watching. Visit 1aauto.com for quality auto parts shipped to your door. The place for DIY auto repair. If you enjoyed this video, please click the subscribe button.