Stuffed!

[Silverbake]

So there I was, half a mile from the nearest road and deep in the woods. I was happily paying-out my winch cable to fix to tree that needed to be pulled down, when the winch began to labour. Not under load, just unwinding. I started the engine to give the battery a boost, and kept going. All of a sudden, the winch stopped, the engine stalled, and the doors locked themselves! (Key in the ignition, spare 40 miles away on the kitchen wall).

All windows and doors properly shut. BoLL**Ks! After ten minutes reluctantly considering smashing the rear quarterlight, a mate who was with me took a strand from a nearby barbed-wire fence and somehow managed to feed it over the top of the door and down to the lock button, where the curved tip of the wire pushed against the tiny dimples and CLICK, all open again. He says he's a retired chemist, but I have my doubts. Whatever, a lesson learnt: make sure there's a window open before using the winch from outside the car.

But: why did the doors lock? I'd love to know.

[K88 MUD]

At a rough guess i would say you have a poor connection on your battery.

[wizard]

Hi

My 200 Tdi disco is the same. A few weeks ago I left the compresser on for the onbard air set up. Then I tried to start it the following morning the battery was almost pancake flat. As I turned the key the doors locked and the bloody alarm went off.

wizard

[disco_al]

it's something to do with the voltage. i seem to remember that if a battery discharges below a certain point, then it will trip the locking system when another drain is added. a lot of older vehicles do this, not sure why though.

it's the same when you jump start a car, make sure the door or window is open, otherwise the central locking usually cycles when you connec the leads up.

best thing to do is leave the drivers door on it's catch, rather than actually shut, that way it can't lock the keys in.

[kingdong2]

i always make sure if i am working on any car with central locking that i have the drivers window down, made that mistake many years ago when i lived in an avenue i had just finished doing an engine swap on a rover 2.6 sd1 and started the engine up then went in the house to make a brew came back to the car and the central locking had gone into the locked position and i had no spare key, lookerlly a neighber with an identical car came over and tried his key which opened the doors, so ever since then i always make sure the drivers window is open.

graham

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03 d2 td5 auto e.s.