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The car has been sitting a good little while. Now that I am back to this project, the door does not open from the inside or outside. Never was an issue before.
Any ideas? I can't take off the door panel to take a look inside until I get the door open...?
Is there tension on the lock button? Have you tried unlocking the door with the key to see if that made any difference?
I tried locking and unblocking with the key. Locking and unlocking by hand. No luck. The Tab you can grab with your hand to lock and unlock moves as usual with the same resistance as normal.
Originally Posted by ray green
Maybe a good spray down with penetrating oil and a bunch of jiggling would help?
Not sure anything is stuck. Kind of feels like the arm that latches the striker has fell off. not much tension when pulling the handle from the outside or inside.
If I can't get the door panel off with the door closed, I might be forced to cut it off. Sadly.
I would do as Ray said, with some of that PB Blaster stuff. If you lift the outside door handle you can see through the little hole and spray it real good. Then work the lock back and forth.
maybe you could look in through the hole and see what is going on too.
"If I can't get the door panel off with the door closed, I might be forced to cut it off. Sadly. "
You can remove the driver's seat, then the passnger's seat and pop clips behind the panel with a flat head screw driver and the lift the panel up. Once inside the door, there is a 1/4 inch bar at the bottom of the ltching mechanism when pulled opens the door
Might try unlocking it from the outside. Depending on what is broke, this may not work. If you lift up the handle from the outside, there is an opening in the door skin. This allows a screwdriver to be fished in and push up on the lock mechanism. It takes some finesse. Back in the day, they made a "kit" that consisted of some metal bracket that covered these holes from the inside to prevent this. It's worth a try.
