I installed Phoenix Motorsport custom door lock pins this morning. I am very pleased with this mod :D Now the door pins sit flush when the car is locked for a nice clean look & my elbow no longer gets poked by the old protruding lock pin.

The pins are anodized aluminum and are a snap to install. Simply remove the original pin, cut the inner pin to desired length, epoxy and you're done.

Thanks Gerry for making them & thanks Wuffer for making them available on this side of the pond.

Cheers :beer

PS. You can cut them to whatever desired length you chose. I went for the short flushed look. If you want the pins to stick out when locked, simply cut less length of the inner pin.

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/2318/l1010654bo8.jpg

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/2750/l1010652wy9.jpg

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/7084/l1010656ke4.jpg

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/4465/l1010657qg5.jpg

http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/9135/l1010669rh1.jpg

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/9186/l1010668iu0.jpg

Awesome! And nice door handles!!

Awesome! And nice door handles!!

+1 Very nice

Koz, Sweet look but I bet you didn't disconnect your batteries! lol! Hey what is that hanging down inside your car in one of the pics.

e39 door lock pins work fine for me :dunno

can't beat the craftsmanship though.. :thumbup:

Does the E31 unlock when you pull the door handle? On an E32/E34 there would be no way to unlock the door if you couldn't pull up on the pin.

lock/unlock button on the driver's door panel near the grab handle

lock/unlock button on the driver's door panel near the grab handle


In the event of power loss (if you have the doors locked and you are sitting inside), you are screwed.

indeed, on the off chance that the door gets locked somehow. Admittedly it's possible, deleting the pass side pull entirely keeps from having a passenger's arm lock the car though

It is a safety issue. You should be able to unlock the door from the inside, no matter what. The car does that by the way in case of an accident... unless it looses power.

apart from the safety issue they look nice

Koz, Sweet look but I bet you didn't disconnect your batteries! lol! Hey what is that hanging down inside your car in one of the pics.

+1 exactly this came to my mind immediately when reading this thread :stickoutt
Looks very nice BTW. Will add this to my list of wanted mods.

Better hope it works better than the airbag in case of accident. I have not seen many go off lately.
It is a safety issue. You should be able to unlock the door from the inside, no matter what. The car does that by the way in case of an accident... unless it looses power.

to me it is always again amusing to read those safety issue discussions. A door pin is causing headaches, CA has the worldwide toughest crash test norm (AFAIK - correct me if I'm wrong), but it is fully legal (again: AFAIK - correct me if I'm wrong) to triple the engine power via turbo or compressor, run untested rims made in far east etc. etc. Lots of stuff that is completely illegal for road use in Germany FOR SAFETY REASONS is no problem whatsoever in the US.

but it is fully legal (again: AFAIK - correct me if I'm wrong) to triple the engine power via turbo or compressor, run untested rims made in far east etc. etc.

not legal by any means in CA and very difficult to get around emissions standards (read: crooked check stations). Wheels follow the same regulations, but there's no real method for regular checking established, so we get away with those :)

thanks for teaching me :)
What if you pass the emission test with a modified engine? Would it be legal then? In Germany every damned technical modification has to be approved and if you get into an accident and have some illegal mods on your car like after market HID, a non approved suspension, wrong tire size or whatever you may be in deep shit.

Well, last time we left (!) Germany, my wife's passport was checked 3 times at the airport! 3 times, microscope involved. I didn't want to bend the rules there. They get you with your chines rim, that's for sure! Not to mention you get a hefty ticket if you run out of gas on the Autobahn :)

thanks for teaching me :)
What if you pass the emission test with a modified engine? Would it be legal then? In Germany every damned technical modification has to be approved and if you get into an accident and have some illegal mods on your car like after market HID, a non approved suspension, wrong tire size or whatever you may be in deep shit.

Not legal, no. Any modified engine/suspension parts have to go through a very expensive approval/test process to be street legal, much like Germany. The rest of the US does not follow such strict rules, necessarily. The penalties are nowhere near as great and tire size is not strictly enforced, however. HIDs are very much illegal, but no enforcement officer is any the wiser that the 8 didn't come with them from the factory!! :D

This is an interesting read between the germans and planet California. Wolf makes a good point about non approved car parts being allowed in many places here. My home state of Indiana doesn't even have annual emissions or vehicle inspections, but I'll probably be putting on a non-airbag german steering wheel to replace the bulky US DOT approved one that it took to get the car imported here, and as Greg mentioned these have expirations but no inspection of them, so they may not work anyway now. Many times legislation deems what is safe and what is not, and it's a matter of degree. Our stock brakes work well but the germans and most of the rest of the world got better ones along with better lighting. We got cool door sills. Sport mirrors got approved long ago but have less area than the dumbo ones for reflection and requires changing your driving style. My point is that oftentimes it seems a contradiction.

In most of America there is no regular safety check for cars, most places have no emission test either. In Europe there is a regular (yearly, bi-yearly) inspection of the cars and they make you change parts big time if something is fishy or you are off the road. They don't harass you for speeding that much though, like if you speed on the highway in the US for 5 minutes, you are stopped for sure... however if they catch you with a photo, that's expensive. (On highways in Europe, 90-100 miles an hour is the norm, 80 is the limit)

What if you pass the emission test with a modified engine? Would it be legal then?

Not in California. You could make your car completely polution free and it would not be acceptable if it was modified from original. Luckily the same is not true everywhere, I can put on 12 turbo chargers and homemade paper mache wheels and there is no one to stop me. The do a yearly inspection to make sure the brakes and lights etc are working, but that's it.

Yeah, Cali is bullsh*t when it comes to engine mods. There is a way around matters but you need to find the right kinda place :cashwalle :devillook

Nice Thread. What were we talking about? Oh yeah door lock pins.

Interesting stuff here... Despite this actually being an old thread; I had never thought about whether or not the doors wouldn't open if the batteries failed. If such a scenario were to happen, so be it. I'll buy a lottery ticket, too :D

I have pics of the door pin surrounds, courtesy of Gerry. I'll post pics. Great mod btw, looks very very nice in person.

Cheers

I know man. I have the same mod and it looks fantastic. I love it

Interesting stuff here... Despite this actually being an old thread; I had never thought about whether or not the doors wouldn't open if the batteries failed. If such a scenario were to happen, so be it. I'll buy a lottery ticket, too :D

I have pics of the door pin surrounds, courtesy of Gerry. I'll post pics. Great mod btw, looks very very nice in person.

Cheers

Koizumi; Could you post a picture of the door pin surrounds. I have the pins but did not get the surrounds. Wuffer did'nt have a picture in his site showing them. Thanks! Rick