Door locks

[Lester12]

Hello all. I have a 1990 325i sedan. If this is the wrong place to ask on the forums, then I apologize and I ask where I should post.

I'm looking for advice on how I should go about fixing my door locks. The drivers lock don't work. The other locks are really hard to lock and unlock like the key gets stuck. Ultimately, I want them to all work like new - so out with all the old. So now I'm wondering if I should replace my door locks or rebuild them.

If I replace, does that mean I have two separate keys? One for locks and one for ignition? I also want keyless entry, so I wouldn't mind carrying an extra key around.

If I rebuild, does that mean it would just work? Or would it work like new?

Also, price and availability comes into question. If sourcing brand new locks are expensive and hard to locate and rebuilding kits are cheaper and make the locks work as new anyway, I'd might as well do that. But if the new locks aren't that much more expensive and since they're already built I'd just pop and replace with the old ones, then I'd look into that too.

Thanks in advance.

[Codym42]

The rebuild kits are only about $40 on eBay. I did the driver's side lock on my old coupe. It's not too hard to do but for some odd reason the deadbolt feature stopped working. It unlocked and locked perfectly though.

I know you can buy new door locks with keys but I'm sure they won't match your ignition. Maybe if you get them from the dealer?? ECS also sells the entire lock kit for the car but its $245.

[mitchlikesbikes]

When I got my car the previous owner only had an ignition key, no key for any of the exterior locks or glovebox. I bought the aforementioned kit and built a new lock for the driver side to match the ignition key. After doing that I felt familiar enough with the locks to rebuild the passenger and trunk ones. I went to the junkyard and snagged a couple trunk locks and passenger door locks. I broke them down to use for parts and so I would have enough of the tumblers to match the locks to my key. I disassembled, cleaned, swapped tumblers, lubricated, and reassembled. I wouldn't say my locks work "like new" the whole way around but they are more than adequate for a car that's about 30 years old. I wasn't that worried about locks functioning like new, but i absolutely did not want to carry two keys for the car, so matching everything up to one key was totally worth it.

[uturn]

Somebody told me they could get a complete rebuild kit(All locks) from the dealer for ~$80. Probably look into that.