First of all remove the speaker cover. Insert a flat screwdriver roughly where I have inserted the screw driver and genlty push the clip and lift the cover slightly while releasing the rest of the clips. Underneath the speaker cover there is one screw holding the door panel to the door, that needs to be undone

Remove carefully the trim near the mirror (yellow square). Remove the plastic covers (highlighted in the yellow circles) that are on top of the various screws. Unscrew the screws and take note of which one goes where. Not all are the same size

Remove the window/mirror control unit.You need to lift the rear part first and then pull it gently backwards.
Lift the window/mirror control unit from the panel and unplug the two plugs attached to it. To remove the door panel, pull the bottom part away (it is held by two or three clips) from the door about 30 degrees and then lift the whole thing upwards and it will just come off. This is what your door will look like wih no panel. Be very careful with the plastic mebrane (plastic sheet) as it can rip if too much force is used pulling it. THe membrane is attched to the door with some sticky stuff similar to blue tac but stickier. You can either undo it very slowly by pulling gently, or another way is to use a sharp stanley knife and cut the “blue tac” in half.

Undo the two screws and one bolt. THat bolt is holding the door lock motor. 

Push that piece of plastic inwards (very little and shift the whole plastic thingy 1-2 of millimeters to the left). Also undo the door lock knob from that clip (highlighted yellow square)

Pull that plastic clip outwards gently and move the whole mechanism to the left. See next photo too. This black plastic thingy should be free now. Also undo

Undo the bolt (highlighted in the square) and then the 3 screws.
The bolt is holding the metal plate that covers the key lock and door handle internally. The 3 screws are holding the locking mechanism.

Try to unglue the plastic cover or if you rip it, make sure you cover it after you are finished. Through there there are two screws that hold the metal plate that covers the key lock and door handle internally. Undo both of them.

Lower the metal plate on the side as in the picture.

This is the tricky part if you are doing this for the first time. You need to pull these two metal rods away from their clips. See next picture too. This part was the trickiest for me as visibiltity is limited and you do most things by feeling with your hands. They are easy to pull out but a bit trickier to put back. Nothing hard though. When you have to put this back together, make sure the metal clips are vertical as the can rotate 30-50 degrees either way. When you are putting in the lower metal rod, you will notice that the metal clip it is suppose to go into, also moves up and down. Make sure you hold it up with one finger while you are pushing the rod inwards to clip on it

Unplug plug from the bottom of the door lock mechanism

Gently guide out the whole mechanism and be careful not to bend the metal rods in doing so

This is it…..

Follow the same instructions backwards to put everything back together.

This tutorial was contributed to  www.volvohowto.com by it’s author “gatos”. Original posted in Volvo Owners Club Forum

 

The instructions in this tutorial will work in the following models / years:

– 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 Volvo S40
– 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 Volvo v40