Advice needed with outside door handle

[marky]

Noticed this morning that the whole outside door handle was working loose and moves up and down at one end. There seems to be nothing to secure it from the outside so I have taken the door card off but cannot see for the life of me how it is secured and how it can be tightened up.

Would really appreciate some help.

Mark.

[robertverhey]

Been a while since I had mine apart, but from memory held in place by two sets screws at rear of handle, which screw into threaded nuts embedded into the plastic.....and if over tightened these nuts will pull out, damaging the surrounding plastic as they come out. If this is the case araldite might get you out of trouble, but in my case I had to make alternative arrangements to keep the front and rear parts sufficiently held together to stay put.

It's a (rare) bad piece of toyota design

Others may have more recent experience or better memories.

Robert

[marky]

Thanks for that.

Looking from the inside there seems to be a bolt and angled bracket with a rubber edge on the left (front of the handle ) This bolt is tight and that end of the handle is secure. On the right hand side which is the loose side access and visibility are more difficult but there are two bolts or set screws side by side - they are not really loose but I tightened both slightly and the only effect it seemed to have is to interfere with the lock mechanism so the door would not lock. Is it possible the screw has pulled out at that end? and also I don't understand why there would be two bolts side by side??


Mark.

Just checked the parts manual and it looks like the two bolts are the correct ones and they are tight and have not lost their grip - noticed that there is a rubber strip attached to the edge of the bracket on the left where it presses on the fibre glass on the inside of the door and I have found a piece of rubber about the same size in the bottom of the door so maybe the original part was replaced by this and its fallen off?

[amarshall]

Thanks for that.

Looking from the inside there seems to be a bolt and angled bracket with a rubber edge on the left (front of the handle ) This bolt is tight and that end of the handle is secure. On the right hand side which is the loose side access and visibility are more difficult but there are two bolts or set screws side by side - they are not really loose but I tightened both slightly and the only effect it seemed to have is to interfere with the lock mechanism so the door would not lock. Is it possible the screw has pulled out at that end? and also I don't understand why there would be two bolts side by side??


Mark.

One of them holds the lock barrel in place, and the other is the fixing for the handle. Best advice is to release the rods from the handle & lock barrel and undo the two OUTER bolts (one at left hand side and one at right hand side, they should be at the same level) and extract the handle from the door to see how bad the damage is. The right hand (rearmost) bolt can feel tight because it's screwed into the captive nut quite firmly, but the captive nut is no longer captive because the plastic that holds it has fractured.

It does sound like something has broken, and is allowing the handle to move & flex the wrong way - which can cause problems with central locking in particular.

Later handles and brackets have been modified to take a pin which slides through the bracket and plastic, roughly in the middle of the handle, to provide some additional support.

If the plastic that holds the thread has broken (very likely), Araldite will hold for a few weeks, but the only real answer is to either get a new handle, or to get one that's been refurbished the Lotusbits way (I promised Mike & Dave I wouldn't say how )

I now consider the driver's door handle a service part, to be done at roughly every 2nd C service.

[marky]

Thanks Angus that does sound very likely - there is too much movement for just a rubber edge to be missing - better get a new handle from lotus bits.

Any tips on how to get the rods off the handle without breaking anything?

Mark.

[amarshall]

Thanks Angus that does sound very likely - there is too much movement for just a rubber edge to be missing - better get a new handle from lotus bits.

Any tips on how to get the rods off the handle without breaking anything?

Mark.

Rotate the coloured plastic clips. They'll pop off the rods and you can lift the rod ends out.

[marky]

Thanks very much for the advice

Mark.