Interior Door Handle

Michael Oxman

Michael Oxman

The Journey Begins!
The good news is I took my first official drive around the block today!! The bad news is that when I went to get out of the car the inside door handle broke. I have the door panel off still, and from what I can see the the top part of the vertical dowel that goes through the top plastic housing, through the handle, and out the bottom plastic housing snapped. I don't see a thread on this - What's the fix? Is it as simple as getting a plastic dowel of proper diameter and push it in to replace the old one while at the same time pushing the old one out? If I need to remove the handle, what's the R&R? I can't seem to figure out how its in there. I'm attaching the only relevant page from the manual I see, but there's no removal/installation directions for this - only the exterior handle (part 32). Thanks in advance!!
Exploded Door-page-001.jpg
 
As I recall the handle clips in. I suspect you may need a new handle, yours is the first one I have heard of breaking (which is not to say they never break, just have never heard of one),

I suspect it hooks to the left and the large bumps to the right interact with openings in the door and lock it from sliding to the right (in the view below) to disengage it.

E7F549E1-680D-46FB-B3D5-BDA99038330B.jpeg


They are available from several vendors if you need a new one. MWB only has brown.

Sorry I dont know of a r&r procedure. Plastic parts are generally the least repairable.

However once you get it out I would bet you can substitute a length of stiff wire for the plastic pin if it is broken. You may have to drill it out, perhaps running it from top to bottom rather than two discrete pins.
 
It slides into the hole in the skin Karls' helpful pic shows the 'ear' you have to depress to allow it to slide & remove. I had dismantled these to clean up the spring mechanism. I'll look for the dissembled parts...

X19-Door00004.jpg
 
Michael Oxman said:
The good news is I took my first official drive around the block today!! The bad news is that when I went to get out of the car the inside door handle broke. I have the door panel off still, and from what I can see the the top part of the vertical dowel that goes through the top plastic housing, through the handle, and out the bottom plastic housing snapped. I don't see a thread on this - What's the fix? Is it as simple as getting a plastic dowel of proper diameter and push it in to replace the old one while at the same time pushing the old one out? If I need to remove the handle, what's the R&R? I can't seem to figure out how its in there. I'm attaching the only relevant page from the manual I see, but there's no removal/installation directions for this - only the exterior handle (part 32). Thanks in advance!!View attachment 38492
Click to expand...
Michael, PM me. I have some have some handels I will give you a good deal on. Pretty sure the are intact.
 
So after receiving a few replacement handles from dragonsgate (thanks!!) I installed the replacement today. Since I did not see an R&R I thought I'd post in case this comes up for someone else.

First you have to disconnect the latch rod (part 1, above). It is held on by a plastic clip. You'll need to get your hand in there and move the clip counter clockwise to release the rod. Here's a picture looking down through the door at the top of the clip.

clip looking down.jpg



Once the clip is unhooked, you push the handle in the opposite direction of the two side tabs that grip the inner door skin. That "unlocks" the handle and I just monkeyed around with it to get it out. I ended up pushing it into the door to get it out.

handle (2)_LI.jpg



Once out, here is what the clip looks like from the side.

clip.jpg



My car is a 1986, and I note that the handles that I got did not allow the clip to rotate 90 degrees so I had to cut down the plastic wall on the handle. Here is the clip that is rotated in the open position and arrows showing what I had to trim.

top of handle.jpg



I'll just add that once I had the handle in I found it impossible to swing the clip back over the rod to lock it. I ended up attaching the rod while the handle was loose, and then fitting the handle in with the rod already attached. Hopefully that will save someone the half hour it took me to figure that out!!
 
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