How to Replace Power Door Lock Actuator 1992-2003 Mercury Grand Marquis

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet.

Hi, I'm Mike from 1A Auto. I hope this how-to video helps you out, and next time you need parts for your vehicle, think of 1AAuto.com. Thanks.

In this video, we're going to show you how to replace a front lock actuator on this 2000 Grand Marquis. We do this on the driver's side, but the passenger side is very similar. It is the same for any '98 to '02 Grand Marquis, and similar for any Grand Marquis of this era as well as the Ford Crown Victoria. The only differences would be slight differences in how the door panel removes and reinstalls. You'll need a flat blade screwdriver, a Phillips screwdriver, a hammer and punch, a drill with a 3/8 drill bit, an impact driver, a flashlight, 11mm and other size wrenches, sockets and ratchets, and a small bolt about one inch long with two locknuts.

Start with the flat blade screwdriver and carefully pry up your switch panel here in the front. That will just come out. Pull back and forth. I'm pulling up with this hand and just kind of shaking it back and forth until it comes up and out. Then, again, with your flat head screwdriver, pry up here and take off your mirror switch. Then make sure you move these connectors and these little tabs lock them on. Pry up on the other side. Pry out down here and pull out on this connector to get it started. Pull with my finger on this one.

Then just carefully go in and remove these little caps. Pry that one out. If you go at them from the bottom and you scratch something it's more difficult to see. Then right here, put your screwdriver in up top. You can see a little space where the screwdriver goes, and pry this bezel out. Now there's five Phillips screws to remove. One there, one there and there, one right there, and then one right down here at the bottom. Now I'm going to fast-forward as I remove those five screws. They are obviously easy to remove because they're just screws, but they do try to just stay in there so as you're pulling them out or as you're turning them counterclockwise you might have to kind of reach in with your fingernail and pull them out. Otherwise just make sure if you can't get them out of the panel, just make sure that when you pull the panel off. If you drop them, you just recover them before you go to the next step.

Once you have those screws out, just kind of lift up on the panel and bring it out. On the backside there are two connectors. Pull back on a couple of the tabs here. Disconnect that. Then pull up on this tab and disconnect that. Your door panel is off. Carefully pull your water shield up and right back in here is your lock actuator. You can see mine is just actually hanging free, so you can see the problem on this car is that there's rivet here and it's broken. Sometimes that can be the problem, or they actually sometimes just wear out and go bad or short out. Because that rivet was broken, I obviously couldn't show you how to drill it out, so I'm just going to show you some footage from a different video.

This is the door handle. This is just so you can see how you would punch the middle of the rivet out and then drill it out. Now, you can see the rivets with the centers knocked out. Now, take a 3/8 drill bit and slowly drill away the rivet. This is an 11mm bolt. You want to remove these screws and remove this latch mechanism. The correct tool for this job is an impact driver. What you do with this is you put it in the screw and then you turn it counterclockwise and when you hit it, it actually drives the bolt into the screw as well as turns it counterclockwise. Put it in. I'm turning it counterclockwise until it's biting the screw a little bit.

Somebody's already kind of done this. A couple of hits and the screw starts coming out. Now, you can kind of move this track around a little bit, and you can see that the twisted the door lock actuator is a little hook. It's hooked in there. Taking this bolt out loosened your window track in here, and now you can kind of pull this lock mechanism back and look in and see where that's hooked in. You want to pull your lock actuator up and push it back to get the hook out of that clip.Then just put your water shield back in place. You can see I just taped it to hold it up out of the way while I was working. Your actuators out. You need a flat blade screwdriver to pry up and push that connector off.

Here's my original actuator and new actuator from 1A Auto. What we're going to do is we're going to take your flat blade screwdriver and pry off this clip. Be careful because it might go flying on you. Take the cover off of there, and we'll need to get this center out which I'm here I'm just using my hammer and punch to drive the rest of the rivet out of that bracket. It's going to go in like that. I need this hook to the 1A Auto one.

This actuator fits a bunch of different cars so you just actually have to choose the correct hook. This one matches up best with this shorter one here. I'm just going to take a little bit of grease and put it right around the edge here. It's just going to help me get the thing together. Put my hook right down in. Then put that in and push. Now my hook is in. The next step is to prepare the bracket and then install it onto the actuator. If you have a rivet and rivet gun you don't need to do the next step which is to put a bolt and nut on. Most people don't have access to a rivet and rivet gun, so I'm just showing you how to install it using a bolt, two lock nuts, and lock washers.

Take the larger bolt and put it through here. I use a lock washer and a nut. Just hold those together for right now. I'll go back to here and reinstall my bracket. So I put that on. Now, I'm just going to tighten that up. Now, we're ready to install. We're going to put the actuator in there, pull our lock mechanism over so we can see the hole where it goes, pull it in, and twist it down. We can pull our lock mechanism right here back up into place. Start the three bolts that hold it. Now pull our actuator into place, put that through. Another washer and nut. This has all this room in your door jam, so you don't really have to worry about it too much. Tighten it up.

The only thing you kind of have to worry about is maybe something getting caught on it as you get in and out of the car. That's nice and tight on there. Now I'll fast-forward as I tighten up those nuts that hold the lock mechanism on. I tighten them with the impact tool, but you don't really need to use that to tighten them back up. You just want to tighten them up nice and firm. As well, put the window channel back in place, put that 11mm bolt back in place, and tighten it up. There's your actuator all installed. Our lead plugged in.

Your door panel is kind of designed with hooks on the bottom. You want to lift up your harnesses, and you can see that the bottom hooks kind of clip on. You can clip your door or your trunk opener, plug that in. Plug this upper plug in. Lift your door panel up. I'm going to speed it up here as I put the five screws back in. The long ones move through the panel. The shorter ones go through that door. Just another tip if you have trouble getting one in you might want to take the panel back off and on some of them. There's kind of clips in behind, and sometimes those clips can get shifted which makes it hard to get the screws in, but they should all pretty much go right in. Reconnect our harness leads and our mirror switch. Then just kind of work this right down in. Push against the door and down in. Push this right in and it locks in place. These go back in place.

We hope this video helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com, your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the Internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free, 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the Internet and in person.