[jorwex]

All,

I had some body work done on my rear passenger door and quarter panel.

After driving away, I noticed that my front passenger door no longer opens from the inside. Upon closer inspection, the inside handle doesn't rest where it normally does (it's 10 degrees or so open from the hinge). Passengers can roll their window down and open the door using the outside handle still.

The door they worked on also wouldn't open at first, but I noticed they had flicked the child lock switch on. It worked fine after that, but the front door doesn't have that feature.

I can't reconcile how the rear door body work would affect the front door, but I also can't ignore the fact that this was working 100% before the body work was done.

Can anyone provide any ammo for me to keep in my back pocket for when I confront the body shop?

Thanks,
jorwex

 

[Antonovich]

do you have a picture of the handle? depending on the damage they may have blended or recleared the front door and removed the door handle to not leave any hard lines.

does it feel loose or connected to anything when you pull it?

a good body shop would just take it back realizing that's kinda messed up. you shouldn't need ammo hopefully.

 

[jorwex]

Attached photos of the rear handle (working) and front handle (broken) in their resting position. You can see the broken one looks slightly pulled open.

Also uploaded a video showing the latch operating on the working door (0:00 seconds in) and the latch NOT working on the broken door (0:25 seconds in): https://vid.me/RosK.

The door handles on both doors feel fairly similar. There is no "click" feeling at the max handle extreme with the broken door. In the video you can hear something making noise close to the latch on the broken door.

So it is feasible that they did something to the front door if they were really working on exterior body work on the back door?

Thanks,

 

[Ulysses]

Probably he broke the plastic thingy that clips at the inside of the door handle (or he didn't attach it all). Make a search here, this has been mentioned a lot.
Edit: I guess he might have broken it by trying to open the door while it was locked through the switch.

 

[RickBlaine]

+1 on what Harry said....the shop most likely broke the door lock cable's green plastic holder. Happens a lot! I fixed mine with two zip ties. Takes ten minutes if you know what you are doing- 30 minutes if you have never done it before.

The give-a-way symptom was that it does not unlock from the inside handle, and there is no tension on the inside lever. The actual cable itself is probably fine (they rarely break)- but the cheap little green plastic thing (does it have a real name?!) either popped out of its slot or just broke.

As Harry mentioned....just search and see the hundreds of threads on this.

 

[jorwex]

Just to close the loop, I went back to the shop and they told me that there's damage to the cable on the inside of the door. They owned up to it and are ordering the part.

Thanks everyone.