Central power locking

I've decided to add the feature of power door locks to the Mini and purchased a master and a slave actuator from my local electronics store Jaycar. 

The actuators aren't large, but the Mini doors are very narrow so they had to be recessed into the inner door skin. I created an enclosure to house the actuator, made from a single backing plate and some hand bent pieces to create the sides, which were then welded together.

An opening in the inner door skin was then created for this piece and all welded in. The recess (30mm deep) has two captive M4 nuts at the common 2.25" / 57mm spacing for the actuator mounting holes, and also has a larger hole to maintain access to the door hinge nut.

The generic rod that was supplied with the actuators (gold coloured rod in photo below) had a lot of free play within the green clip on the end of the actuator, so I made a replacement rod with a small collar that fits the actuator snugly and will use a nylon lock nut to secure it.

The main issue I faced was that the motion stroke of the actuators is 16mm, but the factory Mini door lock rod only requires approx 8mm to lock/unlock the door.  This difference was solved by using a rocker arm with a 16mm movement on one side of the pivot and 8mm on the other side. I machined a simple pivot mount for this arm and welded it to the door skin, but also had to create a small recess in the inner door skin for clearance of the rocker arm.

To hold the custom rods in place on the rocker arm I used generic plastic door rod clips that I ordered from eBay. Note that the standard nut in these photos will be replaced with a nylon lock nut.

The final layout which will easily fit under the fibreglass door card :

I then had to replicate that install for the passenger door. 

The master & slave actuators have standard wiring (5 wires on master, 2 wires on slave) and I'll be using a central locking controller (with remote keyfobs) to complete the central locking system install.

Once the actuator install was completed, I had to remake the mounting bracket for the power window motor slightly lower to provide clearance for the door actuator rod through the door skin opening. The holes and notches in this bracket are for access to the screws into the motor assembly. 

While I was testing the power window motors again I noted that in the bracket that attached to the manual window winder shaft, there was more flex that I'd like. To hold it with more rigidity, I also re-made that bracket with "wings" with two additional rivnuts on the sides.