Well, for anybody out there, I decided to change just the drivers side lock for a new one. The new barrel and 2 keys were about £55 from Mr.T. The process itself of removing the old lock and fitting the new one was not as difficult as I expected, and I congratulate Toyota's design team for building in small access holes to get to the more difficult areas to facilitate removal.
As we all love photographs, here are some from the process:
Step 1, remove door card. It is not necessary to remove the interior door latch to do this. Just angle the door card until it goes through the hole:
Step 2: Peel back the barrier to get access to the inside of the door handle.
Step 3: Undo the two bolts holding the handle assembly. The bolt securing the lock itself is the tricky one, but it is possible to gain access through a cleverly placed hole.
This is the handy access hole showing the other bolt that holds the cylinder in place:
This bolt is easy to get to with a bit of jiggery:
Step 4: Remove the orange clip from the central locking control rod and carefully remove the old barrel.
Step 5: Carefully insert the new barrel, making sure that it sits properly in the handle mechanism. Toyota fixed this handy black post (shown below) to assist in the correct placement of the barrel. Also ensure that the cylinder engages in a lock slot (for want of a better description). this will become apparent if you need to change one!
After this, just go in reverse order to button it all back up again. In all, it took just over an hour to do with tea break. For once a five minute job was pretty much just that.
I now have two keys to get going, one to open the door and central locking, another to start the car. I look at it as an additional safety feature.
If you are interested, the complete set of locks was £225 ish from Mr.T should one want to replace all of them.
Cheers,
Simon & Bert
