Hello everyone,
I am new here and I did try to find an existing answer to my problem .... unsuccessfully.
We have Panda 1.1 from 2009. Our boot door was crashed in a small accident, so we found a second hand one from some 2003 panda of the same color. My husband did the mounting, using all the wires and the black handle of our panda. Basically, it is only the the door itself that is not originally ours.
After mounting everything seemed ok except of the central locking. It completely stopped working (from inside, with the drivers door lock, with the remote).
We took the car battery off for two hours and tried again....nothing!
With every door opening, the light in the car turns on except with the boot.
The lights on the car and on the key blink normally when pressing the remote buttons.
We tried to push lock and unlock buttons many times with different variations.....nothing!
The boot door do not open with the handle anymore, only key or from the inside (but the click exists when pressed).
The heating on the boot window, the lights on the plates and others are all working fine.

Is there anything else what we can do or try by ourselves?
Thank you in advance!

It's hard to say but probably the lock just needs aligning to your car and it may then work. Alternatively swap the lock off your old door. You know that one was working before the bump.

I'd suspect the microswitch in the new lock. As suggested: change it for the old lock.
Car probably thinks the boot is open.

gr J

Bit puzzled...

I may be misunderstanding you, but it sounds like you are already using the lock, handle and wiring from the damaged tailgate, transferred into the replacement metal tailgate shell completely.

If this is correct, then the most likely problem is that either a connector is loose, or the wiring has been damaged in the process of swapping it over. It should not need any reconfiguration as it would not be seen as different by the body computer. Recheck each part to ensure everything is connected, and if that does not solve it, check the wiring harness.


If not correct, then you should definitely use all of the relevant parts from your damaged tailgate. That includes wiring, lock, and handle.

seeing as its nigh impossible to swap looms over in these tailgates unless glass removed im assuming you rejoined wires in roof cavity with a soldering iron
anyway
i had exactly the same problem a 2008 car and i put a 2004 tailgate on
had me baffled for ages on the remote key
the answer was some wires had been swapped round in the years at the factory but fiat in their wisdom kept the same colour coding
i think it was a black and purple wire small bore and another one basically same colour but they needed swapping round

Yes irc, you did understand correct! We used only the metal shell of the new tailgate. The lock, the handle, the wires is all our old. The wires were not cut, only conectors were disconected so the wires could go through the tailgate's inside. I guess that the lock is the most problematic part... there are two groups of wires coming to the lock, from outer and inner side, don't know what is for what.
One more thing, when we press the lock button on the key, the light on the car blinks normally like that the locking is done. But when we open the tailgate and try the same, the car light blinks like that there is something open so it cannot lock. This I guess means that it recognases well if the tailgate is open, but non of the actual locking is happening.
We will check all the wires again... but almost sure that it was ok. To us it looked more like that the programme got confused cause of taking out the wires from the lock and back ...

Thank you all for your replies!

Try unplugging the electrics to the boot release and rechecking the central locking.
If that works, the problem probably lies with either the connector or the "door open" microswitch inside the latch mechanism (not the one in the black handle)

You have checked to make sure no fuses have blown? Obviously as S and B points out above there have been wiring changes that possibly need to be addressed but it's also likely in that case that a fuse has popped so no amount of trial and error is going to yield results.

Did a new(ish) boot in my sons 206GTI recently and that had a connector for the complete harness behind the left C pillar panel. So no cutting and soldering.

gr J

You may have inadvertently plugged in something that should be left unplugged.
I replaced the tailgate handle a few years ago as water ingress had made the microswitch erratic. While the inner cover was off, I noticed a plug and socket that I had not touched were disconnected. Before replacing the lining, I connected the components to see what would happen, and soon unplugged them when the locking mechanism went haywire. The were unplugged on purpose when the car was built.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. So far, no changes.

We tried unplugging the electrics to the boot release and rechecking the central locking. It was behaving absolutely the same...lights are blinking, but no locking.
Does someone know how exactly the microswitch on the boot release works? Is it a kind of magnet? If it is, how strong it suppose to be?
We checked all the wires that go to this microswitch and the lock with a voltmeter. All of them react when remote buttons are pressed. But the two out of three wires from the socket that goes to the lock from outside (not to the microswitch) have all the time voltage between them. Does this mean these two are the real problem?
AndyRKett Can it be the fuse even if the lights react properly on pressing the locck/unlock buttons?

I believe that the microswitch is normally on until you pull the underside of the handle, then it goes open circuit. The microswitch is audible when you operate the handle, there is a tiny click.

In the Haynes manual for the Panda and 500, page 12-34, the central locking wiring diagram seems to omit the microswitch (69).
However, the 500 diagram on page 12-27, central locking (48) does show a switch, which may help.

AndyRKett said:

You have checked to make sure no fuses have blown? Obviously as S and B points out above there have been wiring changes that possibly need to be addressed but it's also likely in that case that a fuse has popped so no amount of trial and error is going to yield results.

Click to expand...

:yeahthat:

TamaraJ said:

AndyRKett Can it be the fuse even if the lights react properly on pressing the locck/unlock buttons?

Click to expand...

Yes, blew it on sisters 500 doing tailgate wiring loom. Changed fuse and Bingo

Sounds like you've made the same school boy error I did and didn't disconnect the battery :nono:

Dear all,

Thanks to your replies, we solved our problem finally! It was just the fuse f38. We put the new one and it's working perfectly!
Sorry for the late reply but our car problem was pending for some time...
Thanks once more!