I've got door lock problem again but much worse this time. It's a 2009 Audi A3 8P7 cabriolet with 1.8 tfsi. I'm desperately hoping someone familaiar with Audi 8P7 and/or  Mk 6 Golfs knows a solution. My problem is that some previous ham-fisted owner has broken the female part of the driver's (RHS) door pillar connection. So much so that the whole socket asembly has pushed back into the door pillar. There is little of no access from within the car because it's hidden within two sheets of steel. The result is I can't reconnect the door pillar plug securely into the door pillar socket. Reaching into the hole inside the footwell wth screwdrivers etc. doesn't help very much. I need a way to be able to push the socket firmly from behind so I can push the plug into the loose socket (or better still, replace the damaged socket completely). Can I get access from within the wheel arch if I remove the liner? What else can I do?

 

Unfortunately, I've had no replies but I can partly answer my own query though it's not good news for anyone else encountering this difficult problem. I removed the wheel arch liner and there is, in fact, a polystyrene filler piece that can be unscrewed and removed which you might hope would give access to the inside of the door pillar. But it doesn't! It also looks to be virtually impossible to cut a larger hole from inside once the footwell kicker panel has been removed without making a dreadful mess. 

So I haven't made any progess. I am totally stumped as to how this particular wiring loom socket is pressed into its position from inside the door pillar during manufacture. I can only think that it's at a very early stage before the facia panel etc is installed.

Fortunately my son who is nimbler and stronger was able to remake the plug and socket connection using screwdrivers as a lever. The locking part is re-enabled and the windows and speaker work, however, the door electrics are still a mess. I'm not yet sure this poor plug-and-socket connection isn't the root of all the problems since all the wires I've been able to test so far have continuity (I pushed back the boot so it tests just the first few inches). I've also got the door card off and the speaker out and the wiring loom so exposed looks perfect.

So my next step is to remove the binding to wiring loom both inside the car footwell and where the door loom goes into the window winder motor/controller unit, i.e. test all the wiring from leaving the car body to entering the door control unit  

One thing I've discovered that this old man from pre-canbus days finds odd. It might interest other potential DIYers out there. In my particular 2009 version of the A3 8P7 there are 11 wires in the door plug - it's a pretty basic version and I understand that others fitted with some other electrical options may have more. Nine of these can be simply accounted for in the old-fashioned way as simple connections for power, earth, speaker, windows and airbag (see picture). Apparently, there are none directly for door locks. There are, however, two very, very thin multi-coloured wires for Canbus LOW and Canbus HIGH. Yet the plug into the door lock itself has far more pins (9 in my case) though I understand that it's probably only 6 of them that actually connect to microswitches and so on. So somewhere inside the door itself the number of wires to operate door locks grows magically from two to at least six! The window winder motor/controller assembly is clearly an important little computer on its own.

There appears to be nothing wrong with my Canbus wires and all the door locking trouble that I and many other owners experience with these ageing Audis (and I imagine the equivalent VAG cars) may actually be due to breaks in apparently totally unrelated wiring for airbags, mirrors or windows! That's the magic of a Canbus system: one bad, all bad. Such is progress.

I have to say I'm not finding my lovely A3 convertible A3 easy to own or work on so far! When she's good, she's very, very good but ..... 

 

Sorry no one has been able to help. I took an stumped on how you can fix this. I guess the expensive option to to take it to Audi.