trunk key lock difficulty

[Jim Wright]

On Tuesday, April 22, 2003, at 09:06  PM, davidpertuz@mindspring.com
wrote:

> When I look at the mechanism in the trunk, it seems that the rod
> assembly and the mechanism at the latch look OK - I think that the
> problem is in the key cylinder area, but I can't yet figure out what.

I fixed a similar problem last fall with my '91.  I noticed when
looking up under the lid at the assembly that there was a small amount
of rust where water had seeped through the lock.  I sprayed the inside
with WD40 and let it soak in, and finally got the key to turn in the
lock again.

I had to fix this out of necessity, when I could no longer pop the
trunk from inside.  I'd stopped to replace a flat, couldn't get into
the trunk, and had to remove the back seat to climb in and pop it
manually.  I'm sure this looked odd, me popping the trunk and climbing
out with the car pulled over on the site of the road...  Then after all
this discovering my starter was dead.  Talk about having a bad day...

Anyway, the manual release wasn't working because it had basically
siezed up, removing this and applying some multipurpose grease got this
going again easily.