door won't shut!

[unicycle]

My driver-side door won't shut. I tried all of the things a normal person would try: fiddling with the latch, playing with the key buttons while holding the door shut, slamming it, babying it, etc. The door will not stay closed. Weirder still is that this happened a few days ago but then 'fixed' itself so that I forgot the issue.

I called my dealer, and the guy said he'd never heard of this problem with a Smart.
anyone else?
any ideas?

[Suze]

Nope, never heard of it. I hope the dealer has dispatch a tow pronto! Let us know how this come out.

Suze

[curtis]

I noticed right away that my doors don't always shut easily also I seem to shut them alot with the seat belt in them..kind of annoying because sometimes the metal piece will get shut in it which doesn't seem too good.

[unicycle]

thanks for the feedback. This isn't the 'door doesn't shut easily' problem that we all have, tho, and I wish it was just the seatbelt in the way.

I'll try again when I get home and will likely have the car taken by flatbed to the dealer (80 mi south!).

[saskdiesel]

When I was lookind at a used Smart CDI the doors had troubles opening.
In fact I couldn't get the driver door open. Neither could the owner.

[unicycle]

When I got home (having had to use my other car!), a final idea occurred to me: play with the door handle on the inside. Sho'nuff, this did the trick. The door works fine now.

Apparently the latch gets stuck somehow and is easily unstuck by opening the handle from the inside. Go figya. I'll have it looked at (greased?) when I take it in for the 10k mile oil change.

[Dave777]

And here I was going to say it had been in a side impact crash test.

[Smart Enuf]

Had it been involved in a side impact test, he would have been surrounded by a crowd of naysayers (aka, Prius owners) saying, "See, we told you that so-called smart car is worthless!"

[mginsa]

When I picked up my Smart 10 days ago I noticed when the serviceman brought it to the sales office he had to slam the door 3 times to get it to latch. I figured a seat belt in the way. A day later when I pulled the driver door closed it didn't latch. After 2 or 3 more tries I pulled the indoor handle and it latched. Figured I'd have the dealer take a look when I went back to pick up my plates in a few weeks.

Then it got worse - one out of four or five times, then one out of 3, then finally it would not latch no matter what. I literally tried it 100 times withwindows down, soft, hard, gentle. So I drove to the dealer holding the door closed (and a continuous beep telling me it was open). The service rep tried 20 or so times and gave up. I put it in the shop, had to rent a car (all they had was $65/day) and called the next day.

The rep told me it had fixed itself! It now worked. He said he had 3 other owners report the same problem but they didn't know what caused it. He put in a call to Smart USA but they never called back.

There are a lot of things I like about my Smart, but wondering if my door will latch each time I drive it is extremely frustrating! I REALLY hope SmartCar figures this one out quickly.

Michael

[Flashman]

Take a look at this post, maybe its related:

http://www.smartcarofamerica.com/for...172-post8.html