We were coming home from a cross country road trip. While in Georgia there was a huge bump spanning my entire lane...probably the biggest bump I've ever hit. It was in the middle of very busy traffic, so I couldn't switch lanes in time. I hit it and the door came unlocked and flew open. It then came back and partially shut and locked, but then it was jammed. It wouldn't shut all the way or open again. We pulled off, and I fiddled with it until I had the door operating again. This scared the poo out of us to say the least. Has this ever happened to anyone else?

 

Do you have a convertible?

No specifics, but one of the folks at Minis in the Mountains was complaining about a similar occurrence a few years back. He attributed it to what he called the flexibility of the cabrio chassis.

It may be worth having the underside looked over, and the alignment checked.

 

I have a hard top. I'm planning to check out the under carriage later. I've been resting. 😊 I don't think it bottomed out, because the highest part of the bump was under the driver's side door (the door the popped open). If it bottomed out, it would have hit the plastic panel and it didn't. I glanced behind the wheel when we stopped and it seemed fine. The alignment seems fine as well. MINIs, thank goodness, seem to be solid suspensionwise. I hope it doesn't happen again though. Pretty scary!

 

The door locks are disc locks so they can't be forced open by body movement - well, not until the body movement is where a semi drove clean through your car.

So it seems more likely that the jolt made something else unlatch the door lock. I would look for something loose in the door opening mechanism - maybe the Bowden cable (item 10) is loose so that the jolt could move it enough to allow the door latch to unlock.

 

I looked the visible parts of the locking mechanism over, but nothing looks lose. We live in central Jersey. There are plenty of good bumps here, so we'll see if it happens again. :P I'm hoping it was a one time fluke.

 

OK, one more possibility -- I just talked with a friend.

The black plastic part of the outside door handle can under some conditions stick partially depressed. I'm told that road debris like tar or some asphalt stuff can stick to the black plastic and make it "sticky" so that it doesn't pop back to its normal resting position. We're speculating wildly here, but perhaps the door was not fully closed. It might be worth checking to see of the plastic part has some crud on it. I just checked mine, and it was really dirty. Only a guess, but....