Adjusting Doors

I decided to take a break from the fuel tank today and do a little bit of work on one of the items that has been a real thorn in my side -- getting into the car. Both of the doors on the car have the same problem, the inside door realease latch works just fine but the outside one does not work at all, so I have been keeping one of the doors ajar at all times. If that door accidently gets closed I have to reach my hand through the partially open window and use the inside door release. The problem is that the window is not open very far and it is painful to get my arm in there and reach the latch.... this has been happening once a week, and its time to fix this. I am not sure why the exterior door release handles stopped working, about all I can guess is that the metal cord inside the outer black sleeve stretches over time and with use. Does the door release cable look like a brake cable on a bike to anyone else?

To get this working again I had to pull off the top door panel. The easiest way to get the panel off is to open the window and use a large flat head screw driver to pull up on the panel near each of the "fir trees" and then work your way toward the edges. Be sure to pull straight up or you will snap off the fir trees, and possibly cause damage to the door panel as well. You can see the fir trees under the lip of the panel on the picture on the left. If your window won't open then work your way from the outside edges toward the middle. Be very gentle because you do not want to have the backing on the panel break. The fir trees might also be brittle, and break but those are only .75 cents to replace versus $200 and something for a new panel if you ruin the backing.

On the right you can see the door release cable (It has the black sleeve on it). All I did was back the cable off from the lever (it is gold colored in the picture, and I think its called the Bellcrank in the tech diagrams). Be sure to use another small wrench around the sleeve of the cable while you are backing off the nut so that you are not twisting the cable. By doing this the cable now moves the lever a greater distance so it can unlatch the door. As you can see from this picture there is not a lot more room for adjustment on this door, there are very few threads left on the left hand side. I haven't adjusted the drivers side yet, and that side has even fewer threads left for an adjustment so I may be ordering a new cable there. My drivers side exterior door handle was already snapped off and while testing this stuff on the passengers side door, that door handle snapped off too. It is a good thing I ordered a pair of handles anticipating that was going to happen.

My lock mechanisms are also flaky, some times they work when the flip the door lock, some times they do not. I pulled off the bottom door panel, which has a few screws along the top that hold it to the door, along with some additional fir trees along the bottom of the panel. There are two 10mm bolts that are a bit more difficult to get at right behind the door grab handle. You will need to remove these with a ratchet and an extension. When I pulled off the lower panel on my car I found a dead mouse in there, so I've passed the milestone of actually finding a dead critter in the car. I tinkered with the lock mechanisms some and it seems to be getting hung up towards the back of the door. Now I need to figure out what do do about that...