It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Got an electric car as a daily to take advantage of the carpool lane and save tons of miles from getting out on the G. Just drive her weekends now.

Well, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve driven her and decided I’d drive her to work today. This morning I unlock her and door opens fine. Go to and from the house to grab a few things. No problem. Finally go to get in her to leave for work and the door doesn’t open. Thought I locked her so went to unlock. Same issue. Eventually used the key fob trick to roll windows down and tried inside door handle and door opened without issue.

Can anyone tell me what to look out for/what to check? I pretty much do all my own maintenance but interior panels and workings are kind of like maze to me. I’ve changed a window motor so I kind of know what’s going on back there but I’m totally lost with the inner handle working but the outside one not.

Hopefully it just needs some lubrication? The car is 14 years old...

 

Does it feel like the door handle is completely slack (other than the return spring) or can you feel some resistance on it? Fortunately it's super easy to to get the door panel off since you've already changed window motors, once you remove the flange of bolts holding the inner panel in place you can use a flashlight and look at the back of the handle/cable assembly and see if it's just broken off or what.

Do this with the window rolled up so it's not in your way.

 

You can see from the 4th picture here how flimsy the design of the handle is, my guess is you broke the load end of the handle just past the fulcrum point since it's just made out of fancy japanese plastic. You would be able to see this by removing the inner panel.

https://www.carparts.com/details/Inf...E&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

Yes. Zero resistances besides the spring that pulls the handle back in. It basically feels like it’s still locked.

I compared to the passenger side and the second half of the travel during the pull, you can feel increased resistance followed by a reduction when the door unlatches.

 

So, to be clear, I’ll have to replace the actual door handle? So that means I’ll need to have it painted to match huh?

 

Not necessarily, you need to open the door panel to see what actually broke. I think the handles are ordered as a match paint item so they will be pre-painted.