I previously tried one of the tricks on YouTube that involve drilling a hole in the actuating arm, but that didn’t do anything. I then found another video about using shims in the mechanism to eliminate the side to side slop. That did the trick. The actual cause is wear on the rod that the handle rotates on.


what I did for the little joint here was cut some trash plastic into a c-shaped shim, which I secured in place by supergluing another piece of plastic to the shim. This by itself was only a slight improvement, compared to shimming the rod, handle, and arm (where the actual wear is). You might be able to get away with skipping this step entirely.

For the joint between the arm and the handle, I thinned down a small washer which I placed in between the actuating arm and the body of the handle, and then slid the rod through the whole in the shim.

Thinning a metal washer down to the point it wouldn’t cause the handle to stick open was more work than it was worth. I would suggest just one or two layers of plastic here, too. Plus, the plastic should self-lubricate against the body of the handle.

My door is on such a hair trigger now that I might go back and use plastic. It’s probably better to have a wee bit of play in the system.

Another way to fix a stick handle would be to just replace the rod, but this would probably require a lathe.

 

I'm surprised the hole and rivet in the arm method didn't work. I know when I did mine I found that the location of the drill hole needs to be very exact for the swing arm to prevent itself from folding under the proper release position. I also used a thin spacer where the pin goes through the handle and housing and that cured any horizontal movement. Takes very little effort to open my door now.

 

The starting position of the swing arm isn’t really the issue, at least in my case. It’s slop caused by a worn rod.