Whilst waiting for the new rod clamps to arrive I remembered I had bought a solenoid when originally fitting the door skins as I wasn’t sure piggybacking onto the MR2 rod was going to be reliable enough in operation.
I’d never even taken it out of the box so found it in the garage and took a look at whether it would fit. Well it’s small enough to clear the glass when it’s dropped and it looks like there’s a suitable mounting point just below the MR2 release rod.
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It pulls up to 5kg in force and there seems to be enough movement on the solenoid to adjust the cable such that it will move the bar enough. I need to sort a mounting plate out as the one supplied isn’t wide enough to pick up the mounting point. I will sort some plate out and have it as a back up - my idea was to mount a microswitch behind the Sierra handle which is operated when the handle is pulled. There looks to be a 12v feed already in the door for central locking so shouldn’t be too hard to wire it up
Any views from folks reading this as to the engineering / feasibility of this longer term?
Forgot to say I would use a rod clamp on the MR2 rod and hook the wire from the solenoid through that otherwise it will just slip on the MR2 rod