AlienHack

Hallo guys,
i have a question about the inner door handle-cup.
mine was broken whe i bought the car . i searched for replacement and bought a used one of early design (mine is the same early design.)

the early design has this weird extra plastic piece that looks like its plastic "welded" on the main handle . this is what broke off on my original. the new later design handles dont have this extra plastic grip piece. also there is a copper color like stickertape that goes from this piece to the back of the handle. it looks like this copper thing might be good contactor for power but i cant understand if its there for some reason.

here is a pic of the early design cup and the piece i am talking about.



so my question is why was this there? does it have a purpose? because it was a thing that broke easily. and also on later models it has been removed.

MSilk

iTrader: (1)

My car has that too, I think it is for static electricity discharge. When you grab the handle you ground yourself. That is just a guess though

SA3R

That normally has a very thin strip of copper sheet (paper thin) plastic welded to the back of the cup, and inside there is a 'soft touch' area which your fingers are supposed to touch when you grip the cup.

The idea is, you grip the cup with your fingers, which transmits static electricity through the soft pad, into the copper sheet, which is grounded to the inner metal door skin.
It is very common to see on the early JDM Japanese imported FDs we have here in Australia.

My 1992 car had them. But the soft touch pad eventually breaks the plastic welds and your fingers push it all out and it all falls off into the inner door with wear and tear.

In 1996+ they revised the cups without this system (and some other world markets outside Japan never even had them)

When mine broke the plastic welds, I ordered the 1998 cups without the static discharge pads as they are beefier. But my wife hates it. As she now gets zapped every time she leaves the car!! So I can tell you that if the system is undamaged and in good condition, it does actually work.

AlienHack

More pics of the weird stuff