What a weak design. Have any of you taken out your broken door handles and seen where they break? The pot metal casting has a small arm that comes off the flat handle which presses down on a mechanism, and this arm is waaaaay too wimpy for the job. Over the years the cheap a$$ metal just cracks in half.

Stuff like this makes me want to fab in a door handle from an old first gen Integra (they look almost identical). Honda knows how to design handles!

If I can't find a replacement FC one (they're never in the junk yards) I'll just fab up a replacement piece, out of STEEL not recycled aluminum cans.

 

Aymen to what you said, the whole door mechanisms are shitty

 

Yep I have, when mine broke. Pretty crappy eh

 

ahh i knew honda had to be good at making something!

 

yes, honda is good at making cars. Why else are honda and toyota the only car companies in the "excellent" tier of car reliability for like the past 10 years?

 

yeah I broke my drivers side so now I plan on shaving them. They look like **** and you can't paint them properly without them cracking. Get rid of them

 

maybe its just the owner that breaks the handle, as I have had FC's for 15 + years and never had a handle break

and wern't those 1st gen honda/acura handles the ones you could push a wire rod through the hole and unlock the door???

 

At least they could get in the car! I agree with the title of this thread.

 

And the FC handles are hard to break into? A piece of thin metal shim and 5 seconds and you're in an FC.

I've not broken one, but it is definitely pot metal, which means it varies from handle to handle in strength. Perhaps Mark has just had good luck.

 

Mine broke last week. I found one in a junkyard for 5 bucks. If you prime it first and do about 10 very fine layers and clear coat it the paint wont crack. Mine looks like it was never broke. Turned out very well.

 

Mine just broke too! Cant find one around here! So modifying an integra handle might work?

 

pm'd jigga

 

not like an fc is any more difficult to break into.

The fc door handles suck, I also agree.

 

My handle broke as well (drivers side) - they are pretty weak. We also all know that the lock cylinders pretty much stink as well. To avoid any future problems, about 2 years ago I got BRAND NEW OEM door handles/lock cylinders for both sides. When the handles arrived, I replaced the soft factory bracket behind the handle with stronger steel pieces cut to shape from what I think was 18 gauge (don't remember for sure). No problems since. The paint on the handles was also a 100% match - who knows how long they were on a shelf somewhere as I don't think 2H claret mica door handles were a big seller in Mazda's parts bin I think I paid $80 per handle and $35 per lock cylinder if I remember correctly.

 

I paid 8 dollars for a handle from the junkyard, it can break 10 times before I pay what you did

 

I've never broken a handle. I've had a number of ocations where the doors get frozen the body and the only way to get it open is to pull hard.

 

Then you got a good deal because when I tried to get OEM handles, the Mazda dealership told me $149 for each handle and $50 for each lock cylinder plus shipping and handling... I said screw that... I took my broken handles apart, and welded the piece back together and used E-clips to hold everything in, then I j-b welded the clips down... the handles are both working fine now... Also, the lock cylinders suck, they are easy to manipulate, when I took mines apart they only had 3 pins in it... I felt a little uneasy so I added some more myself, making it a little harder to get inside my car...

 

my drivers side broke on my old base
and about 3 weeks ago my freaking passenger side broke on my turbo ii

 

I have to agree with it being a crappy design. I only got 17 years of use out of my drivers handle before it broke.

 

heh i broke into one of my hondas with a header gasket once

 

my driver side is broke on my daily and my parts car couldn't be the pass that i have a spare for

 

My handle might have been needing adjustment before I broke it because I had to lift it *all* the way up to get the damn latch to let go. It was at the dragstrip too when I broke it and was pretty pumped after spanking a lot of Hondas, so that may have been part of it. But puuuuuleze, it's a POS handle. I'll bust out the free body diagram and transform equations to show how little factor of safety is designed into that slender arm if you want.

We have enough people with broken handles that I should just make a batch of 1000 of better handles where you could use your existing lock cylinder. Hmmm.

 

Hey, if you succeed in fabricating one out of steel, make me one too!
Mine was broke by previous owner..passenger side, exactly where you said.

 

same here.... TWO drivers side handles broke.

if a door handle is made with good material, it should last the life of the car.

 

Again, that was 2 years ago - we also get a sizeable discount at the dealer through our shop's account and a friend in sales.