Outside looking in

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How to open a stuck trunk lock in you oldsmobile cutlass ciera when you're not stuck in the trunk.

To someone who is only acquainted with modern cars that posses electrical actuators this may seem odd, so it's important to note that old cars do not have any means of opening the trunk from with the car.

Our trunk lock had been sticking periodically for a while, but I was always successful in bumping it open. At least until my wife took the car on a vacation and it got stuck closed and wouldn't budge, thus isolating her from a fair quantity of her travel supplies and generating a vast amount of annoyance. When she returned, I was going to take the car to a locksmith and have the lock drilled and replaced, but a snowstorm ruined the plans that day, and I resolved to at least try to solve the problem myself.

With exterior access denied, at least without drilling, the next option was to attempt entry through the back seat. That's actually pretty trivial, and can be done with a socket set. (How to remove your back seat)

After that, you'll have to move or remove all objects from the trunk so as to crawl through the pokey, sharp, sheet metal cross brace to fiddle with the lock mechanism.

The mechanism looks like this. If the lock cylinder is jammed, but the actual latch isn't, it will release if you put screwdriver in in the rectangular hole on the right and push the bar to the left. If the latch itself is jammed, you should try to lubricate it (WD-40) or, as a last result, unbolt it from the trunk lid. Once the latch is free and released, push the trunk open.

My trunk was stuck closed because the lock cylinder was stuck, so the next step was to remove that.

The obvious way to remove it is a metal tab riveted at the base of the trunk lid. The rivet is easy to drill, but the tab has a secret metal finger holding it in. To remove the tab, You have to depress the tabe with a long, skinny object through the holes in the lid.There is one hole in particular that appears to be perfect for the job. I had to find a piece of 1/4" bar that was 18" long from the junk pile to get the better of the tab.

The tab is attached to a claw that grasps the sides of the lock tumbler, holding it in place.
 

 

With the tab/claw removed, the cylinder slides out and the trunk can be opened with a narrow screwdriver inserted through the resulting hole. A good cleaning and re-lubrication got my lock cylinder rotating again, so that's probably the first cut approach to that problem. Replacement cylinders are available as well, though getting the keys matched is hard (see a locksmith), so the car ends up with another key.

When putting the lock back in, I used a sheet metal screw instead of a rivet.

Desperate for cash? Remove your back seat!

How to remove the back seat from an Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera.

The answer to this question had eluded me for some time. Many years ago, when gas prices first went from high to unreasonably high, I took everything I could out of the car to reduce mass. Spare tire, tools, jack, trunk carpet. That got the car nearly 100 lbs lighter. Many small items ended up providing a large contribution to mass.

I tried removing the back seat as well, figuring it was full of plywood and springs, but I couldn't figure out how to remove it. I got that it was somehow clipped to the car body with sheetmetal claws, but I couldn't find the way to get them to let go. My mistake was that I was trying to lift the front of the seat off.

The real way is grab the lower seat cushion from the rear and pull up, pivoting the cushion foward. The anchors on the seat will rotate out of the claws in the bellypan, freeing the lower cushion.

 It turns out the rear cushions come in at about 20-30 lbs each... they're all closed cell foam, fabric and a little formed wire. Not a huge mass contribution. The spare tire weighs more. Of course, mass is mass...

There are bolts holding on the upper cushion that must be removed, then, with some wiggling of seat belts, the upper cushion can be removed by sliding it upward. It is held in place by 3 claws on the back plate, so it's more resistant to coming free. There's an insulation blanket behind the seat that can be removed, provide some access to the trunk cavity. Useful if the trunk lock is throwing a fit. The cross members appear to be structural, so removing them without adding strength elsewhere is not recommended.

NoVa Roller Derby 2014 Season Opener: Photos

If you're still using a modem, or using an iDevice, this is going to take a while to load.

This was an extremely good double header. Both the league game, and the Skatetroopers vs Penn-Jersey were hard fought and well played.

You can see the number of bruises increasing over the course of the bouts. Bonus: Find the loose wheel bouncing down the track.