| L322 Deployable Steps - The Wedge Key | |
A TALE A LUCK WITH A FLOPPY STEP
So a while back, on my drive opened my door and I heard a sharp 'crack' from the deployable steps and found the driver's side would no longer retract. Floppy step is not a good look.
Peering into the mechanism it looked like this thing called a wedge key was missing. Looked around a lot and can't seem to buy one. Info about the wedge key, let alone a part number, is elusive at best. If you buy a new motor you won't get one I don't think. But the motor was whirring and it was a come back to later job.
Fast forward some months and I decided to clean my gravel. There were weeds despite the weed mat and so I decided with the dry weather to sieve all the dirt out to proper stop the weeds coming back.
Here's Operation Gravel Clean
(Floppy step showing it's shame right there. )
I got bags of dirt out, quite satisfying actually, it's a lovely wax-on, wax-off kinda job. You can see the clean gravel nearer the door and the dirty gravel at the bottom of the pic.
As I was sieving I see a glint. Was it a roman coin? No. Better; I realised my luck. The wedge key. Never left the driveway. I'd juts assumed it came off somewhere on the road.
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Turns out the bolt snapped, leaving one end still in the steps and the other in the wedge key.
So for me a very satisfying and lucky fix costing £2 for a new stainless M6 bolt 20mm length
If you can't buy one (I couldn't find one) you can make one, ideally in stainless.
Here are the dims:
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Cheers, Greg
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2011 Vogue SE 4.4 with lots of toys in Stornaway
Last edited by GGDR on 19th Jul 2025 2:52pm. Edited 1 time in total
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19th Jul 2025 10:40am
