Spent several hours this PM trying to find a tool to unscrew what I thought were 3 Phillips head screws to remover the plastic cover over the lid latch/lock mechanism. Good grief, a nightmare. With my wife's handbag mirror and going through every tool I have and finally figuring out I had to hold the back end of the plastic inserts with a very long needle nose pliers I was able to remove the 3 gizmos holding the plastic cover.
Long story short: I drenched, flooded, drowned and smothered the mechanism with WD 40 Silicone Lubricant. There are at least a dozen friction points involving springs, rods, brackets, latches, plungers, etc. This is the most nightmarish Rube Goldberg totally unnecessarily over engineered POS I have ever encountered. On top of that it robs the saddlebag interior of precious space. Say what you will about Harley, and I have, they sure know how to implement the KISS principle.
Only with my two huge fat thumbs was I able to press the lock button down. When I actuated the mechanism with my fingers(pulling up on the rod assembly) the lock button was smooth as glass to operate. So was the rod, latch, spring, brackets, etc. when using my fingers......but when trying to push the metal tab on the button against the opposing metal tab on the rod assembly it was absolutely frozen and would not budge without my two fat thumbs giving it holy heck. Mind blowing complexity to perform a simple task. Pictures will show brown grease which is not anywhere near the mating surfaces of the aforementioned metal actuation parts.
After letting the numerous parts soak in silicone the right side lid now opens closes, locks, unlocks as it should. I saw no gunk or dirt anywhere in the mechanism, just the 12 year old grease that had no involvement that I could detect.
Exhausted, will tackle the left side bag in a day or two. Seems to me the two critical metal mating surfaces between the rod/latch assembly and the lock button assembly need to be coated in Teflon or something super slippery, otherwise a regular application of oil, silicone, whatever will be necessary on my bag latch assemblies.