elkurt

I've got a '95 Accord that whenever I lock/unlock my doors, the driver side door makes a loud noise. Can anybody tell me how I can fix this annoying problem?

ForceThis!

prolly a bad solenoid, my front left is dying too

DragonTLS

your actuator is bad

sed6

It's not really a bad actuator...

If left alone that loud clunk will turn into a clunk,clunk repeating any number of times. Here's the cause.

Inside the door lock actuator mechanism an arm pivots/rotates and at the end of it's travel it hits a rubber bump stop. Over time the bumper wears and slips off or rotates around the post holding it. First it rotates until a thinner section of the rubber pad is all that's between the arm and the post holding the bumper, and this is why it's gotten louder (less rubber to deaden the sound). Eventually that arm will wear through the thin part of the bumper and the bumper will slip off altogether. When this happens the arm moves about 1/4 inch past where it's supposed to stop and hits the post itself. By moving past the designated stopping position the system doesn't see that the doors have locked and it repeats the locking process over and over and over, until finally you pull your hair out and tear it apart to fix it. Have fun!

sed6

Oh yeah, to fix it remove the actuator mechanism, take it apart carefully and use a zip tie to hold the rubber bumper in place (fat side of the bumper toward the 'arm', and fat end of the zip tie on the backside of the bumper out of the way. Or spend $40 on a new (used) actuator that will probably fail in a few months.