Car Door Fixin’

Just a quick blog I thought I’d share, so I busted my car door off in the cold part of winter when the plastic of the door handle was especially brittle. Really sucked and it broke further making it almost completely unusable. Which is really bad given that the passenger door doesn’t unlock easily. I got a cheap door handle ($8) and decided I’d potentially give it a shot to see if it’s worth trying to fix up the door. Took it to the repair shop and got a $100 quote. I’m broke and I’m not spending that kind of money on a door handle I can probably service myself, so I set aside the time to replace it on my own.

I just thought I’d say that having a Haynes Manual for my vehicle helped a lot, but what helped me the most was a Youtube channel called 1A Auto Parts. They are an online auto parts retailer that posts DIY videos of car repairs. Sure enough, I found a video for my specific model of car door.

The video was comprehensive, but it obviously took me a little longer than the guy in the video.

Took a lot of tools, a little bit of fumbling (getting the clips off didn’t seem that intuitive at first) but I got the door handle off! It went exactly like the video showed, although I did not remove the center door brace (the metal bracket removed just after the film) I had enough room to negotiate my hand without removing it. Goes to show that if you need to do some simple work sometimes it’s best you do it yourself. Then I searched for a second video to remove my rear brake light assembly which was also helpful to replace a light that was out. All in all this is a great channel to keep in mind if you need some help troubleshooting a minor car issue.

No point to this blog just thought I’d share that it’s easy to use the internet – and helpful too if you have a Haynes manual sitting around for your vehicle – to do a lot of minor fixes. Amongst other things I did also tear apart my center console area to replace the light bulb that illuminates my automatic shifter (I can’t see if I’m in drive/reverse etc. if it’s dark without that bulb, and it was also out). That took a considerable amount of time as well since I slipped the bulb housing out by accident then had a hard time getting it back in (it’s only made to be slipped out if you tear out the whole console, which I wasn’t going to do). Did some nice detailed cleaning while I had the console tore apart (everything was a complete mess from an unfortunate soda incident or two).

I admit I did not shop for parts through 1A Auto (just got them from Amazon & Auto Zone) but I will definitely look at the 1A Auto website the next time I need a part for my car since they provided such useful info for me! Check it out.

And hopefully I will not rip more door handles apart, but with my Herculean strength it’s hard to control myself sometimes.