It is done!
Well, not quite, if I’m honest, and it turned into even more of a pain before the lock was usable again…
I fitted my new lock and reassembled the door, which is considerably easier to do with it open. Then I discovered that the central locking didn’t work. “Never mind”, I thought. “At least it will pass the MOT”. Only it didn’t, because the indicator repeater on the passenger side wing mirror wasn’t working. Oh joy. I decided to leave it to the garage to fix. But they couldn’t. The car came home.
After much research I discovered that the central locking and indicator repeater are actually controlled from the electric window winder unit. A used unit from a scrap dealer was only £20, so I felt that I had little to lose by trying one. It arrived a couple of days later and I fitted it the following weekend. It worked! 😀 Both the central locking and the indicator repeater functioned correctly!
But…
The winder unit, whilst the same part number, is from a different Skoda model. It seems to know where it thinks the top of the window is and stops winding the window up at that point. It’s actually well below the top of the actual door frame. So I can’t wind the window down without then having to take off the door card, unscrew the winder unit and raise the window manually.
I don’t know how to fix that yet.
Joy of joys, the driver’s side window has stopped working too. From the noise it makes I’m pretty sure that is because the cable that raises and lowers the window has corroded and snapped. I’m really not sure I can be bothered to fix that right now.