Hello everyone...

This is my first post here...but my infiniti forum guys (and gals) have always been helpful to me with my car, so I'm writing you all with a question on my fiance's car. Hope you can help...here goes...

She has a 2000 accord that the passenger door will not open from the outside. The door opens fine from the inside and door lock mechanism works, but just doesn't open from the outside. Anyone had a similar issue and attempted to fix this yourself? If so, what did you do? I presume if I take the inside door panels off, I will most likely be able to troubleshoot this...but wasn't sure, or knew how easy the door panels come off. Any light y'all can shed is appreciated. Thanks!

 

It sounds like a clip or something has come disconnected from the rod that actuates it... should be easy to fix...

Door Panel: There is three screws (all covered by caps, possibly four but I doubt it) upper left corner of the door (not normally visible with the door closed) is a cap, pop that off, remove that screw, behind the door handle is another cap you pop off to unscrew it, then if you look down in the armrest there should be one in there and possiby on the front of the armrest under the power controls kind of hidden may be one more. Remove all those. take the door handle assembly and pull it forward slightly and it should pop out a bit, disconnect the rod that goes to the door handle and disconnect any wires going to power controls there, pop off the inside mirror cover in the upper left hand corner of the door. Now pull the door panel out all the way around the bottom and the sides so the clips pop out. Once that's done just lift it up and out a bit. Disconnect any clips/wires there or just leave them connected and rotate the door panel out of the way as needed.

Fixing it: start by folling the door handle rod that you disconnected back and find out where the mechanisim is. Now trace from there up to the outside door handle and you should be able to figure out what's going on. You may need to cut some plastic out to get to it and if so I'd keep a roll of duct tape on hand to patch that back up so you don't run the risk of sucking in more crap from outside when you're driving.

Let us know how it goes, take some pictures if possible!

WELCOME TO THE FORUM!

 

Thanks for the help! It'll probably be this weekend before I have time to work on it, but will definitely take pics along the way and let you know if it's something I can fix or not. Till then...

 

Got the door fixed today..atleast temporarily. Basically, the plastic ring where the arm mechanism fits into the door handle is broken. The arm still fits in there, it just doesn't seem to stay and works itself out after opening and closing it a few times. So I'll have to see about getting a new ring to fit in there. But until then, I wrapped some tape around the mechanism to make it fit more snug...so hopefully it'll hold till I can order the necessary party.

So just in case anyone needs to reference this for the future, here are some pics (hope they post in the order I uploaded them...haven't uploaded pics on here before):

Pic1 - Arrows represent the screws holding the panel on the door. Actually, the top left one is just a plug. But the one behind the door handle and inside the door arm are screws. Removed these, and then started at the top left and worked my way around the door bottom pulling the panel out. After you remove the screws, it's just plugs holding the panel in place.

Pic2 - Panel removed. As you can tell, my fiance has been in a wreck before so presume this plastic was put here after the last repair job. But presume this was why I didn't have to cut anything to gain access...

Pic3 - Close-up shot of the mechanism that fits into the outside door handle. The mechanism is on the left, and I have circled the plastic ring that's broken.

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