I have found myself in a bad situation where the battery of my Bentley has died. The drivers door is a replacement door of which I don't have a key.

So the question here is, if the doors are locked and let's say someone is inside the car, does pulling the driver side interior handle open the door or do the locks need to be unlocked for the handle to work. I have done it hundreds of times but I cant remember if the door handle auto unlocks the door. I know the passenger side does not. You have to push the unlock button for the passenger door to open.

I'm going to have to do the coat hanger thing and try to grab the handle but before I go through that insanity i just want to know this answer.

 

Ha. You've posted to the right place. JUST went through this.

The way to do it is through BOTH windows. If you do the driver's or the passenger, you can grab the interior handle, but you can't pull it out far enough, it really has to go far to unlock everything.

The way they got mine open was two guys went at it from each window and both were able to grab the handle and between them they could pull it far enough. So it's a two-man job.

Johnny also has a way to get power to the batteries by going up through the engine pan to the alternator with a wire on a stick.

But know that it is really difficult, if not impossible to pull the handle from only one side.

Now, I wasn't there when they did it so I don't know if there are professional break-in tools for tow truck drivers that would work, but this was at the dealership, they had never had to deal with it before.

And the bad news is that the door lock comes with a new key and is REALLY expensive. So expensive my independent didn't even tell me the price, just "too expensive to do", and I don't complain about prices, lol.

 

Oh boy.

What happened is that the doors were frozen shut. I think that the drivers door tried to unlock and open but just to the first latch, so its a tiny bit open. The window also went down a tiny bit like it should. Unable to open the doors I just gave up and walked away. I'm guessing that one of the doors being partially open may have turned on the courtesy light or something else that drained the battery over the last few days. Nothing works at all. Totally 100% dead.

 

Hello @Copperline ,
​​​​As @British stated, yes the doors will open (unlock) by pulling the inside handle, as they require no electricity, you could have no batteries in the vehicle, and the inner handles will unlock and open each door, tested it myself.

Johnny

 

So i got the doors open. I'll post this here for anyone that needs it in the future.

I used about 7 feet of steel brake line. At the end I made a 90 degree angle of 1.5 inches. The inside of the handle is a bit curved so just trying to hook the handle was nearly impossible but by getting the bent part of the rod as if you were trying to hook the handle, then turning the rod 90 degrees (to vertical) then i was able to wedge the hook between the top and bottom of the handle and it opened up fine. Took maybe 10 minutes to do it.

I was able to front feed the power under the engine cowl enough to get the trunk open. Now both batteries are charging.

New problem is now I have IMMOBILIZER ACTIVE and KEY NOT FOUND.

Not sure how to fix that but I'm glad I'm in the car.

 

Great to hear that you got access, as to the IMMO and key not found, are you inserting the keyfob blade into the ignition switch, or are you just trying keyless start, I have had this after a dead battery, but putting the key in the ignition and turning, then waiting less than say 20 seconds, the vehicle recognizes the fob, and all is good.

EDIT:
How is the fob battery, does the fob light blink when you press either of the fob buttons ?

Johnny

 

Good news you got it open. I'll have to remember the brake line trick.

 

The fob battery is reasonably new. I was able to open the trunk with it. I'm really concerned about this Immobilizer Active issue though. The radio comes on and I can access all of that, the windows wont go up or down. The door locks wont lock or unlock. Turning the key to the left doesn't do anything different. Turning the key to the right gives me the warning. Using the stop start gives me a KEY NOT FOUND warning.

Both batteries are charged. I have taken the negative terminal off both of them and let it sit for a bit.

 

After resetting the batteries more things are working. The locks now work but the windows don't. Still have the IMMO active warning. The fob locks and unlocks the door and the alarm sets. I have no idea where to go from here. The car was perfect before this happened. Even when I was rebuilding the car I never had this issue.

 

When my driver's side battery had died, I couldn't open the trunk via the button on the trunk or through the emergency manual switch behind the back seat. I removed the seat and found the switch, but nothing happened when I pulled it. (I still have not learned why...)

But when I used the key blade and tried starting the car, it actually started. Everything appeared dead prior to this. (I also haven't learned why this happened.. Perhaps it is due to the two separate batteries? As I've been told, not many cars have two batteries in this fashion.)

When I started the car I also began to receive a bunch of weird error messages, like regarding the IMMOBILIZER and so on. Once I got the battery charged and started the car again, they all went away.

If you have VCDS, try clearing all fault codes, module by module, and starting the car again.

 

I got it working. I used the VCDS and got into the mobilizer and kessey and re-matched the key. That got all of the car working but it would only run for a second. Still with the Immo active warning. At least the windows started working. After sitting in the car googling anything i could think of, i removed the key and put it back in and suddenly the car stayed running ( I had done this numerous times before with no success). I guess the car just figured it out on it own? Who knows but the car is back to normal. Until the next thing breaks!

 

Glad to hear you got it sorted. Happy New Year!