Seamonkey89

This is great! I'll call my dealer and update when I hear back! I hope they cover this!

Edit: Called the dealer who transfered me to the service dept, and they took my vin number but, said my Jeep had already been serviced for this issue, in 2011 (its a 2011 JKU). They guy said that means its a 'one and done' service and so I'm kind of up a creek without a paddle as far as Chrysler is concerned. The newer actuators going 10 years means they were good enough I guess. He said it would be $160 to try to diagnose what the issue is. So, I'm going to try to figure it out myself this weekend. Looking at some pricing, it looks like a new door is between $1000-1500, the actuator (if thats the issue) is about $250, and so this repair will be between $570 (assuming 1 hour of dealers time) and $1500 to fix. I *just bought a house and really don't have much extra cash. I'm considering just unplugging this door for a while and trying to fix it myself. I'll update if anyone is intersted. Just let me know

Edit: Conclusion?
Ok, So I got furloughed today and I decided to not drink, but fix this door intead. I took the trim/plastic off the inside of the door and inspected the parts mainly; the cables, the latches, the motor, and any moving part i could get access to at that stage. Nothing seemed particuarlly loose, but I fiddled with what I could to make sure everthing was tight and seated properly in its little space. There appeared to be one small broken snaping kind of peice (forgot to take a pic of it sorry) but it seemed inconsequencial, and belonging to the trim/plastic that secures the plastic to the metal. I then decided to run the FOB a few times to see the motor work and hopefully spot something obvious but, to my surprize it worked! Locking and unlocking the door no longer gave a ratchet sound and the door locked and unlucked against the locking mechanism of the Jeep's body. And this using just the FOB.

So the way I figure it, I think there is a cheap bit of plastic that will likely age and break (The bit of plastic seating clippy plug thing that I found that was broken was a differnt color than all the rest of the internal plast, in the upper middle of the door area), and this bit of plastic was slightly pushing the upper center of the door's plastic trim slightly outward, causing the moter/or another moving part to not be seated properly, which caused the ratching sound as it would not quite get grip and open and close the lock. this would also explain how it would open and close the locking system only about 25% of the time. it just wasn't gripping well, I guess. So when I removed this dime sized clippy little bit of off yellow plastic from the inside, i likely allowed the moter/or other moving part to once again seat properly and engage the lock again. We'll have to wait and see how long this fix lasts. As far as what broke the plastic clippy bit in the first place, I have recently done a move to the mountains of Idaho, and opened and close that door about a million times, loading and unloading my stuff. I could have slammed it too hard by accident? Or perhaps the wind did? and this is just a weak point in the system? Dunno. I also celebrated my move by going Jeeping and there were a few rough bumps that might have aggrivated the door's little aged, yellow, dime sized plastic bit, causing it to give up the ghost. Who knows. Hope this helps ya if you have the same issue and are trying to figure it out.

Total cost to fix= one lost job
Tools needed= Cross top screw driver, T25, Allen wrench (forgot the size but its standard).
Time to fix= 30 min