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[Steveplumb]

Having lived with the passenger door central locking not working for a couple of months I thought it was time to investigate.  I located a second hand ' solenoid' online for £25 and accepted I would probably have to order it later on.  When I stripped out the unit I reckoned that there was nothing to be lost by dismantling it  . Quite easy, just 2 small roll pins to be tapped out and the inards eased out of the casing. To my surprise the workings are in a fact an electric motor and worm drive mechanism with 2 micro switches at the end of travel. Not an actual solenoid at all. All looked fine,  so I put power to the motor and it whirred into life . nothing was stiff or seized in fact it looked as new. I manually 'clicked each micro switch a few times in case they were not operating but they sounded very sweet. So decided to reassemble with a little contact cleaner on the connector etc. hey presto it now works fine . Not quite sure what 'cured' it. ........... but I am leaving the door card off for a week or so to see if it really is happy to keep working !!! so much more satisfying than just replacing a part .   

[feeutfo]

changed my motor, made no odds, lubed the lock up and seems fine now, think the lock mechanism offers too much resistance after a while and burns the motor out.

[Jukeboxnut]

I have exactly the same fault on my car, a sharp thump on the door or pulling the catch manually fixes it for a while and I am beginning to suspect one of the microswitches is starting to fail.   This is a common failure mode on jukeboxes, the contacts inside a micro switch can be very flimsy.