I have a new 2006 Forester, and the fact that the car has only door lock, kind of makes me feel uneasy. Three door locks on my 99 Forester, only the one lock on the driver's door on my 06. Hey, do door lock ever freeze or break? They sure as hell do. Now you've only got one, and the remote as the "back up". It's cutting it a little fine, if you ask me. What's next, only one sunvisor that you switch from the driver's side to the passenger's side as needed?

Huh?

I have an 04 Forester and 3 03 Foresters are my direct neighbors. Where we live in NJ we do get ice on the cars many times through the winter and all 4 of us haven't had any problems.

 

Yeah I hear you though, if the remote doesn't work and that 1 lock is frozen or otherwise unusable, you may be out of luck.

 

If any power door locks fail, you can always unlock them from the inside, the tailgate is slightly different. You have to be agile enought ot crawl into the rear with the seats down and remove a filler plug to get to the unlock lever. That's documented in your owner's manual. But the point here is you must already have access to the 'inside' of the vehicle.

I'm fairly certain Subaru hasn't found a way around freezing door lock(s) given that a careful reading of the owner's manual reveals it hasn't found a way to prevent the parking brake cable from freezing. They tell you not to set the brake in freezing weather.

 

Funny it would be, if you finally thawed out the door lock only to find the parking brake frozen.

 

Bye the way, how would you thaw out the parking brake on a '05 Outback while it's parked at that ski lodge? On my '68 Datsun pickup I simply slid underneath and tapped the ice loose with a wrench. I'm betting it's not that simple in the 21st century.

 

Juan