There's a few things I need to take care of before I take this beast out to DMV to get the title transferred over. One of those was that the driver's door didn't latch (I knew this going in, and had the previous owner bungee cord the door shut for the trip up here.) A quick visual inspection showed the push button on the outer door handle was stuck in the in position.
So the first step was to get at the back of it and see what was going on. Obviously, I needed to remove the door panel on the inside to get to the back of the lock. Here's what I found:
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| Wow, that's a lot of sheet metal and a very small opening! |
So much for that approach. Oh well, more poking around--and it was then that I discovered a screw on the lip of the door that went into the back of the door handle. Removed the screw, shut the door and problem solved!
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| Simple solutions are always the best. |
Ok, even I admit that carrying around a small screwdriver to open the door was a bit much. Looking at the back of the door handle, the pin that made contact with the latch mechanism in the bigger hole above was rusted in place. I found a bottle of Liquid Wrench on my workbench, liberally applied it to the door handle and let it soak overnight. Today I took sanding paper to the rusted pin, cleaned it up nicely, and the handle works again.
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| Almost good as new! |
I find that an on-line dealer sells a new knob and spring kit--since there's some rust on the knob, and I'm sure that pin will rust shut again at some point, I think I'll spring for that in the future.
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