Removing a van door handle

[don58van]

I am trying to remove the external handle from a drivers-side van door (same as a four-door saloon front driver-side door). I have taken the handle out of the passenger side without a problem. I have read previous posts on this site and elsewhere, but I haven’t found a solution.

I have the door completely disassembled apart from the external door handle and associated locking mechanism.

The problem is that there is a small piece of sheet steel just inside the handle aperture that is impeding the handle from passing through. I hope the photos make my problem clear. I don’t know whether the offending piece of metal has been bent out of shape or it belongs where it is.

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Can someone kindly provide some advice, please?

TIA
Don

[mowogg]

It's a while since I have done it, but I recall having to take the door top off .

[simmitc]

I have not got a 4-door here to check, but right hand should be a mirror image of the left hand, so if you were successful with one, you should be OK with the other.

Looking at the pictures, it looks to me as if the bit of metal causing the problem has been bent at some point - it does not look like a machine formed part.

Looking at the Body Parts List, even though it's the wrong place, I wonder if it is part 41 - 17H 9350, Lever - operating? I can't see anything else that it is likely to be, unless it has been left behind when removing the window channel which does have a bit of a bracket attached. Either way, I think that you need to move it. For reference, assembly shown below:

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[don58van]

Thanks for your replies.

I recall having to take the door top off .

I have stripped the door down to a bare shell--except for the handle that is refusing to come out.

Simmitc: Thanks for all the info you provided about the lock. I should have made it clear that it is not part of the lock itself that is the impediment, it is a piece of sheet steel that is attached to the inside of the door shell. This is more obvious in the second of the pictures.

At first I thought it must be there to function as a stop for the handle at the fully pulled position, but it appears that a stop is part of the design of the handle itself--so an external stop is unnecessary.

It is beginning to look like I will have to bend or cut the offending piece to allow the handle to clear the aperture.

Don

[don58van]

Update!

I used a strong pair of bent-nose pliers and some brute force to bend the offending piece of metal out of the way of the handle and was able to remove it. With the handle and the escutcheon plate (?) out of the way, I was able to see the problem. The metal pressing that forms the trailing edge of the door has an aperture on which the escutcheon plate is mounted. It is through this aperture that the handle/lock assembly is inserted and removed. It is clear that in the case of this door, the aperture was incorrectly stamped during manufacture, resulting in some stray metal that should not be there and some malformation of what should be there. The factory worker fitting the handle obviously just bodged it into place.

With a cutting disk on my dremel-type tool, multigrips, bent-nose pliers, a special shape panel hammer and a file I was able to get the aperture very close to how it should have been. The lock now goes in and out without a hitch. Problem solved.

No wonder there were no previous reports of this problem on the messageboard!

Don