2000 BMW 323i , Locked Out

A friend of mine came to me one day needing some help with his daughter’s car, a 2000 BMW 323i that was locked and all attempts to get in failed. He asked me if I knew of any tricks to get into the car. I told him no but would look into it. Well a little bit of research on my part and I found out what the problem was but no one had the answer of how to break into the car without breaking a window. After exhausting all avenues that is exactly what he did. We did along the way find out some interesting things about the car. Number one is that the passenger rear full sized window is the least expensive to replace. Number two is that in order to keep the broken glass to a minimum we found that applying a self adhesive shelf liner to the glass before breaking it kept most of the glass in one place (stuck to the sticky side of the shelf liner). Number three is that the cause of the problem is a broken driver’s door lock cylinder and a situation that BMW refers to as double lock down. From my understanding in order for the system to come out of double lock down the key has to be in the ignition and switched on. Then the master unlock switch has to be activated twice and the computer system will unlock the car.

Once the car was unlocked and the glass had been replaced, the car came to the shop and we started looking for the cause. According to all that I had read it would be a damaged lock cylinder in the driver’s door. Removing the lock cylinder is quite easy once the door can be opened. There is an oval shaped plastic plug that has to be removed to gain access to an allen bolt. I had to take my time and be careful because I did not want to damage the paint.

Once the bolt was removed the lock cylinder just slides out.

Unlike most cars that have the lock cylinder attached to internal door linkage this vehicles lock cylinder only activates a switch. You can see the square recess in the white piece in the following door picture. We had to order a new lock cylinder from BMW by the VIN and it came properly coded for the original key.

Now what happens is the shaft on the lock cylinder breaks a little bit and finally jambs and will no longer turn the switch. It does not stick in the unlocked or locked position though it breaks in between the two positions and this position is what BMW refers to as double lock down. The thinking is that if a thief was trying to jamb something in the lock and rotate it, the vehicles computer system will lock the car down and not allow it to be stolen easily. What made the situation worse for my friend is that they has a remote and had never been able to get it to work. He thought the remote was faulty so he ordered a new one of those also. Turned out it was okay we just had to properly program it. I will do another post on that soon I hope.

The morale of the story that we came up with is this. The driver’s lock cylinder needs to be lightly lubricated every couple of years. The remotes need to be in working order at all times. The remotes need to be used 99 percent of the time. The key does need to be used, but use it at home when time is not an issue, and use it only with the windows down.

My thinking in all of this is that a BMW dealership should have the capability to override the system with a radio frequency command of some sort. Does anybody know if this is possible?