Replacement of Driver Door Lock Actuator on 2003 – 2007 Honda Accord

I recently replaced my driver door lock actuator. Herein is the replacement procedure. My driver door lock actuator had become worn and was acting intermittently. The symptoms although related are quite different from an ailing key fob. The symptoms I had with mine which have since vanished after the replacement were:

  1. Key fob worked intermittently
  2. Sometimes when it did work, the driver door unlock/lock knob will not lift all the way up (or go all the way down) when the unlock/lock button was pressed on the key fob.
  3. Sometimes when the unlock/lock button on the driver door panel was pressed, the driver door lock/unlock knob will not go all the way up or down. This meant that I had to either pull the unlock/lock knob up or push it down manually if I wanted it to work.

Materials: 10mm wrench, Philips screw driver (chrome-vanadium advised) and a flash light.

Advice: Easy does it. Keep cool, it’s not exactly hard it just needs patience! If you are not the patient type you may be better off leaving this for a technician to do.

Steps:

1. Remove the driver door panel. The complete procedure for this can be found here: Removal of driver door panel on the 2003-2007 Honda Accord

2. Peel back the waterproof covering. Note the methods mentioned in the previous post on how to do this successfully without tearing the stuff.  You only need to peel back the rear portion, enough to allow free access to the needed parts. I probably did an overkill below.

Replacement of driver door actuator 2003 Accord

Waterproofing peeled back for access for repair

3. Remove this size 10mm bolt. It holds in place the rubber guide railing for the driver door window.

Replacement of driver door actuator 2003 Accord

Unscrew the 10mm bolt

4. Remove this screw and unhook the tabs holding the black plastic housing for the actuator . Observe the plastic tab above and beneath this screw. Just unhook and slide through the holes on the metal. The lock actuator is behind this screw.

Replacement of driver door actuator on the 2003 Honda Accord

Remove this screw

Replacement of driver door actuator on 2003 Accord

Remove this plastic stuff

5. Remove this plastic tab securing the cable to the interior driver door handle. You will need to do this by feel. Slip your hand behind, pinch and push the other ends of the plastic to come through the hole.

6. Remove this single screw holding the lock/unlock knob in place.

Replacement of driver door actuator on 2003 Accord

Unscrew this

7. Disconnect these 2 electrical connectors to the actuator. You depress a tab on the connector to do this. You may need a flash light to visualise this.

Replacement of the driver door actuator on the 2003 Accord

The 2 connectors to the actuator are shown.

8. You will now need to remove the 3 screws holding the lock mechanism on the jam area of the driver door (don’t worry if the description sounds weird you’ll get it from the following images). It is for these 3 screws that I advised using a chrome-vanadium screwdriver.

Screwdriver

Screwdriver to which a socket could be applied

They were screwed on pretty hard! Wasn’t able to unscrew with just a screwdriver alone! But I found a screwdriver that had a 16mm end to which a 16mm socket could be attached for leverage. I reckon an impact driver would also do same.

Replacement of driver door actuator 2003 Accord

Unscrewing the 3 bolts on the driver door jam area

Before moving on to our next step, I would want to recap on a particular step from the removal of the driver door panel post. This is the most difficult part of this repair as most of it is done by feel. However, if you understand and master what I’m about to share, it would become a walk in the park.

Removal of the driver door panel 2003 Accord

A u-joint, you will need to unhook 2 of these to free the actuator.

Remember this image from that post? 2 of these kind of joints are now what’s keeping the actuator from coming out. It’s paramount to master the unhook procedure for this joint. By the way, for simplicity I’m going to call this a “U-joint” (don’t know the correct name). I quote below from the previous post, the unhook procedure for a U-joint 😀

Removal of front door panel 2003 Accord

Black plastic rolled off

“To do this, just roll back the end of the black plastic next to the tip of my index finger while pushing the grey metal out of the recess of the plastic. Once out, you will have the image below. With the black plastic removed, lift off the end of the cable.”

9. Unhook this U-joint

Replacement of 2003 Accord Driver door actuator

Unhook the U-joint

Once unhooked you will have the image below. You can see that the black plastic has been slid off the metal. Pull the metal out.

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10. Remove the last remaining U-joint holding the actuator. The arrow shows the direction to slide the green plastic towards. To get the clear view shown in the image below, bend and lift the rubber window railing out of the way.

Replacement of driver door actuator on 2003 Accord

Unhook this U-joint

11. Manoeuvre the actuator and lock assembly to remove from the door.

Replacement of driver door actuator on the 2003 Accord

Driver door actuator being removed from the door

12. Remove the single screw on the actuator/lock assembly.

Driver door actuator 2003 Accord

Remove this screw

13.Using a flat tip screwdriver, push down on the metal stub circled in red and remove the plastic housing for the assembly.

Driver door actuator 2003 Accord

Push down on the metal stub

Once done, you will end up with the image below:

Driver door actuator 2003 Honda Accord

13. Slide off this metal from the actuator. Do this by pulling the metal back.

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14. Unscrew the single screw(shown next to my middle finger) and unhook the last U-joint(next to my index finger).

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You are finally free!

driver door actuator 2003 Accord

Old and new actuator side by side

14. Transplant the pink plastic for the actuator U-joint loosened above to the new actuator.

driver door actuator for 2003 Honda Accord

New actuator good to go

15. Follow reverse steps to finish up.

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