2003 530i, 130k miles. Sweet car. A joy to drive. But...
Already fixed one rear door latch, driver's side. Now the passenger side is wonky. Cold this morning, might have something to do with it? When I replaced the outside door handle dealie with one from an earlier junkyard E39 528i (metal construction) I noticed that the operation of the original part (plastic construction) was not obviously defective--nothing broken, kinda works. The metal junkyard part fixed it just fine. My guess is that the plastic just kinda deforms with age and the part gets to a point where it won't quite do what it's supposed to.
So I guess I've talked myself into a junkyard trip to see if I can score the handle mechanism for the rear passenger door.
While I'm there, I might as well get spares for all the dang doors. All of these door latches seem overly "tight" as in it takes a good bit of effort to open them, either from outside or inside. Is there some sort of maintenance procedure to help correct this? The parts are just a short cable and nylon pieces. Not much to go wrong. Do these things just fail with age? Part of the joy of BMW ownership, I guess?
