Over the last year both of my outside door handles have broken. I ordered the new ones last week and got them three days ago. I followed the Haynes and Chilton and removed the outside skin an attached the new one.I did the passenger side door first. About 2 1/2 hours total time involved. As I was sitting there in the floor I noticed that I could see the two speednuts that hold the handle on the skin. I moved to the drivers side door. Remove the inside panel. No biggie. Then to the outside door handle. After removing the speednuts and the little plastic clip that holds the rod on I was able to remove the old handle. The new handle was a little unhappy about going back in the rectangle shaped hole. Just the part with the new plastic clip. I took a round file and opened it up just enough to insert the new handle. The speednut closer to the middle of the door went right on. No big deal. The rear one was different. I couldn't get a straight or near straight shot with the socket. Then I noticed that there was a nice place to drill a 1/2" hole and then this would be a good way to reach the rear speednut post. About 4" above the rivet on the left side of the door
In this next picture you can see that I removed the rubber end cap to the left of the inner dew wipe. Two screws. I could see down in there real good. I used a long screw driver to guide the rod back into the plastic retainer clip. Then pushed the plastic clip to snap over the rod. You can see the little white plastic clip seated on the rod in this second photo.
That's it. Reattach the inside door panel back on the car. Just short of an hour. I could do this again in about 35 min I think. The part I hate is removing the clip off of the window crank.
I hope this will help someone else from removing the outer door skin to replace an outer door handle.
Joe Crawford
Texas
