push button exterior handle repair
 

When I bought the car 2 yrs ago it had some issues that I am now getting round to sort out.
A lot of you have issues with the little button the exterior door handle that when pushed locks the car.
I thought mine was broken/failed due to water ingress so I bought a new handle and set about to replace it and cure my other common fault of a battery drain and the car not going to sleep.
On getting all the trim off (See my other thread on soft close microswitch for pics etc) and getting eyes on the handle from inside the door skin, i saw that the wiring that goes to the 5 pin plug was very badly corroded and 2 out of the 5 wires were hardly making contact at all.
I ordered a new plug, stripped back the loom to get to good copper, added repair wire where needed to get the length back and fitted the new plug, turns out my handle button itself is fine and this cured my issue, now it might be something to check as when installed the wires that run into the plug are bent almost back on themselves I assume for the window clearance.
I hope this gives some of you guys hope and worth checking BEFORE you shell out on new door handles like i did!!!!

Good one. A potential £££'s saving heads up

Thanks for the tip! I replaced two of my door handles and although they've been working fine, the code has reappeared on VCDS, so I'll be checking out the wiring shortly.