Where's the Power Door Lock Relay on a '96 Regal? Think mine's dying.

[Noishkel]

Greetings fellow Buick owners.

I was wondering if someone might be able to tell me where the powered door lock rely is located in a '96 Buick Regal? I think mine may be starting to fail.

For background: all four doors on the family Buick began to randomly try to re-lock themselves while the car was in motion. I disconnected each door switch individually to see if was just a switch with a short in it, but malfunction seem to operate independent of the door switches. The next logical step would be to check the rely, but I haven't been able to find it yet and I don't have a service manual to hunt it down. For now I just pulled the fuse and I'm doing my best to hunt down any loose or damaged wires. But any advice would definitely help me speed up the process.

Thanks.

 

[CorvairGeek]

I don't know on the W body off hand, but GM is partial to the them being behind the right front kick panel.
With that said, does this car lock the doors when it is shifted from park? If so, I would be more suspicious of the module for the door/belt chimes in an area called the "Convenience Module", in or around the fuse block. I don't believe the '96 W body has a body control system except for this module.

 

[Noishkel]

With that said, does this car lock the doors when it is shifted from park?

Yeah the door automatically locked when I started the car rolling. Or they did until I pulled the fuse, due to them constantly trying to reengage the locks while the car was in motion. 😛 Also: the door chimes themselves work just fine, even with the fuse pulled. I think that's on a different circuit.

That said: what is the 'Convenience Module'? I'm not familiar with it and I don't really see it on the circuit diagram. Is it by another name?

 

[CorvairGeek]

The convenience module is the name where the seat belt chime/warning module is located in the A-body which is separate from the fuse block. I'm not sure where the module is in the W cars.
IF the car locks when it starts moving, rather than when the gear selector is moved, this is more sophisticated, and I'm probably all wet. However, I would still suspect something is signaling the relay to lock, consider the troubleshooting that you've done. Any I'll fitting doors that could registering as open intermittently?

 

[Noishkel]

Okay: bit of an update. I went outside to look for the relay; still no luck in trying to find one that matches with the photo I have of that relay. And more importantly I think I was mistaken originally when I said the doors locked as they should. It now looks like they don't lock when they're getting a signal to do so, and only eventually start to lock themselves when I start driving down my driveway. It's just gravel and I think the vibration is what is causing the short. So ultimately I still think it's a bad relay that's causing the issue. Right now it's raining, so I'll have to wait for it to stop so I can crawl back up under the dash board to see if I can find that rely.

I'm also hunting around online for any diagrams for behind the dash. Not having much luck there, so if anyone's got a service manual I'd appreciate any help looking for that. :/

 

[Noishkel]

Woo! Good news: I actually found the damn thing. Turns out it was no where near where you would probably think... it's not under the dash, it's along the drivers side door frame. o,,O

:/

Now to see if replacing the thing actually fixes the issue.

 

[CorvairGeek]

Wow, never would have guessed that location!