Seized door locks on 2011 2 door JK

I live in Canada, where vehicles suffer in pretty hostile environments for 5 months out of every year. Salt, sand, snow, ice, slush, you name it. It not only attacks the chassis, as a slurry of liquid sandpaper, but it’s airborne and infiltrates every nook and cranny of the body. That little door that protects the tiny springs and pins of the lock mechanisms on my Jeep just couldn’t stand up to the onslaught! All three locks were seized. When I bought it the previous owner just shrugged, and said, “it’s a Jeep, we never locked it”. True enough, I guess. But I decided to fix them - amazingly complicated and delicate! By the time I got to the third lock, I pretty well knew what I was doing though. They now all work perfectly and I didn’t have to buy anything or rekey the locks. However it took me about 3 hours per lock. Kind of enjoyable work, in a perverse kind of way.

 

What repair was needed to unseize the locks? Preventative squirts of WD40 to prevent future issues?

 

I removed the lock cylinders and disassembled them. Then I soaked them in rust remover for an hour. After that lots of penetrating oil and I tapped out the cylinder with the tiny springs and key pins in it. Most of these were seized together and had to be gently tapped apart with a tiny screw driver and filed with a jewellers file then reassembled. It’s a big process!
I used machine oil on the key pins and silicon grease on the cylinder when I reassembled everything.
I learned that a little maintenance and a simple squirt of machine oil is a lot easier than repairing the locks! Once they’re seized though, it won’t be as simple as squirting wd40