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Civic Door door won't open
I recently got home from work and the driver door would not open on my
1998 Honda Civic LX. Neither the inside handle nor the outside would work. I spent a while reading on google groups and looking around online but didnt find much. I finally got it open, so I thought I would post my findings, and how to go about fixing it (I saw a post about a 1990 Honda Accord in this forum with a simular problem, they used a different solution). I posted to a couple other forums and they said that the rods were off, however that was not the case. In many cases, i would imagine that the rods would be the answer, but apparently not always. Since i was able to find so very little on this problem, I figured I would write this up and post it so others might get the answers I couldnt find. Some of the things I found online were people talking about drilling out the locking mechanism, using a torch to cut off the back of the D ring which the door latches to, and cutting open the door to get to the latch (followed by bodywork and painting). These all seemed a little overly distructive to me, and after some playing I came up with another solution. So how did i fix it: 1) Pull off the interior door panel. This is hard because the door is closed. The way I did it was to take off the handle (interior) and take out the screws in the arm rest and down at the speaker, then start at the back top and pull it off the top of the door at the window. This takes some effort, but it will pop off. Then pull the lock rod out of the hole in the panel. You can pop off all the presure fittings except the one behind the dashboard. You'll need something like a prybar to stick back there and work that, but you can get it off...with enough tugging and working it. 2) Once the door panel is off, undo the bolt that holds the window track (note: the window must be up). Next, undo the screws that hold the power lock mechanism on and the black plastic part that shields part of the mechanism. Now you should just have the latch mechanism left, which has a metal plate on it with the backs of 2 screws at the top and one at the bottom. 3) Take a dremmel tool and cut the metal plate just below the two screws (i did it right at the ridge). Also grind off the heads of the two rivets which hold that plate on as well. On my particular one they were in the middle of the plate. Once you have done that, you can work a screw driver/needle nose plyers in there and pull the plate back a bit. Next use some vice grips (or something) to pull off that whole plate down to the bottom screw. I just fatigued it off at that point. At this point you should be able to see the metal lever and spring for the latch release (top) and see the lever for the lock mechanism (bottom). 4) Take a screw driver or something and pop out the lower lock lever (dont forget to unhook the rod to the outside keylock mechanism). This takes some force, but it will pop out. The latch release is located on the outside behind that lock lever. Once you have that popped off, you can just push the latch release down with your finger and open the door. 5) Get a new latch mechanism and install it. This is fairly easy once the door is open. 6) Put the door back together. I found that once i had that release accessible, i was able to close/open the door without a problem from the inside (not using the handles of course, since the whole latch mechanism was basically destroyed at this point.) I hope this helps someone out there. |
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