1979 Town Car Locks

[NadinetheContinental]

Does anyone have any knowledge about how to fix the locks on my 1979 Lincoln Continental Town Car. The key won’t lock the doors and the automatic door locks won’t either the locks go down a little bit but spring back up. How can I fix the problem?

 

[Action]

Is this on one door or all doors?
Can the doors be manually locked and unlocked from the inside. Not the inside electrically operated lock button. The lock knob
How long ago did the door locks work?

Action

 

[batchman]

Do you know the key is correct, as in it used to work?

Sounds like the car is saying "oil can", but you want dry graphite in the key slot. There are small aerosol cans with slim, stiff nozzles for that. Then exercise the key, gently, as it can bend or worse, break. I bet the rest of the mechanism just needs whatever grease Ford recommended in that era. Work to get at, but that plus Action's point on cycling the mechanism to work in the lube sound like the answer to me.

Best,
- Jeff

 

[NadinetheContinental]

Is this on one door or all doors?
Can the doors be manually locked and unlocked from the inside. Not the inside electrically operated lock button. The lock knob
How long ago did the door locks work?

Action

3/4 doors don’t lock or unlock, there is no manual lock unless you use the key (which doesn’t work) or push down the actual lock knobs (which doesn’t work). I don’t have the information about when they last worked unfortunately. I’ve also tried greasing the locks 3 separate times with no effect. If anyone knows what the issue is or how to fix it that would be appreciated.

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[Action]

Pushing down the lock knobs IS manual locking.

The answer to your question is behind the inner door panel.

Action

 

[batchman]

The answer to your question is behind the inner door panel.

Which is where you need to be applying oil, preferably a penetrating oil like PB Blaster or Zep (some number), ie better than 3in1 or WD40. Patience is required, keep dosing (each joint) then fiddling, dosing and fiddling, and eventually (as per Fudd's1st law of opposition), it will start to move - continue until Bob's your uncle. Grease is for after the mechanism frees up. And in the lock cylinders (where the key goes in), you want graphite - not grease.

HTH,
- Jeff