For some time, my passenger rear door, (opening from outside) has been out of commission.
When it first stopped working, I assumed the handle had broken, so ordered another and took the handle off to swap out the new one, but instead of finding a broken handle I saw that a piece of the door mechanism had snapped. Not able to deal with it at the time and also the difficulty in effecting a repair without what seemed like a major teardown, I put the door back together and lived with it.
Fast forward a couple of years and the driver's side rear started to act up - nothing broken at first, just going out of adjustment ...which was odd, because the "small nut hack" had been added to the mechanism quite some time ago.

The car is a daily driver with 250,000 km - and I'm responsible for the last 100,000+km. When I say daily, I really mean daily. She's my only car and gets a lot of use. Anyway, the driver's side door also had a problem which meant I had no rear doors that opened from the outside. Pain in the ***, for sure.

Luckily, my pal Jim @manwich66 had a parts car with intact door mechanisms, so I finally decided it was time to give Jim a call and ask for help, so I sent him this pic:


Photo I sent to Jim explaining what was happening

Next day, Jim sent both COMPLETE rear door mechanisms down and straight away I was able to put the driver's side back in order. The locking block and clip were worn out on my rig and at one time, removing the block to try and bring it back to life I'd dropped (and lost) the small nylon pin that secures the block to the white pivot so the connection was sort of haywire.

New parts made all the difference. One door (the easy one!) done.

Next I had to deal with the passenger side with the broken white plastic pivot. Not a removable part, it was fastened to the mechanism permanently. Jim had sent the entire passenger assembly including the lock and suggested I replace everything. Taking the parts out, he said it was an easy job if I removed the window track.
Having a drivers side pivot that I didn't need and seeing as though L & R pivots were identical, I thought I'd make it difficult for myself and try to remove/replace the pivot rather than the entire assembly.

To get the spare part I was going to use I ground away the rivet from the driver's side assembly. Here's the piece I ended up with.



pivot after removal from driver's side mechanism

That job was fairly straightforward as I had the mechanism on the bench. Removing the broken passenger side part in situ wasn't quite as simple, but having access through the door handle aperture I was able to saw the part off using a hacksaw blade. Took a while, but off it came.



broken pivot removed passenger side


salvaged pivot from driver's side spare used to replace snapped passenger side pivot

Will continue story later ..have to go to fishing now!

 

No problem for the parts Larry! So easy to just lift off the window frame and gain easy access to the related parts and leave the window itself in situ.
I suppose you could drill out the pin and tap in a small screw to affect a repair.
let us know how you make out.

Cheers,Jim and Cin

 

As I'd ground the end off the spare pivot pin when removing the white plastic pivot lever, I had to come up with a method to re-attach the replacement part.


End of pivot pin ground off spare part



Pivot pin after removal

I drilled and tapped the pin ready to be bolted back to the lock assembly.



Assembly with pivot pin drilled and tapped

After bolting back up and setting the adjustment, the door works properly again.

A tip if you're working on the rear door handles - the two 8mm bolts on the bracket that hold the handle in place can be very difficult to locate on re-assembly if you remove them completely. Leave the rearmost bolt attached to the handle but back it off so that the bracket can slot in - once it's in place it's easy to start the forward bolt.
Trying to hold the handle, bracket and start the rearmost bolt at the same time can be VERY frustrating!

Larry

 

Well after a successful repair and replacement of the inner components of the lock mechanism shown above, the door decided to remain locked when the remote unlock was pressed ...the lock button would attempt to come up, but only momentarily - it immediately jumped back down. It was also very stiff when operated by hand.
The door handle side of things seemed to work well though, so I assumed there was something awry in the actuator.

Taking the door card off and examining the operation of the button/actuator and comparing it to the spare lock mechanism from Jim's @manwich66 old "Redd" car, it became obvious that something deep in the latch was binding on my mechanism, causing a lot of play with the button/actuator linkage.
It now seems obvious that the pressure from operating the door handle had caused the white plastic pivot lever to snap in the first place. So the only way forward was to do what I SHOULD have done from the beginning, replace the entire mechanism.

A quick phone call to Jim for a "how to" gave me the good news -it was easy to remove the lock mechanism, just a few T30 torx bolts, but to get it out of the door, the window frame would have to be removed. Although this sounded daunting at first, it wasn't really all that bad. Three T30's on the hinge side of the door, a couple hidden under a grommet at the top on the opposite side, one close to those two at the top of the door panel face and one below the latch.
With the bolts removed, we were able to slide the window frame up, not completely out, but high enough to clear the latch so we could get it out of the door.

As Jim's part's car had earlier style electrical connectors, I spliced my 94 style plugs on to the replacement lock mechanism and re-mounted the latch assembly. With it in place, we slid the window frame back down and refastened all the bolts, fitted and adjusted the door handle, replaced the door card tried opening and closing the door. Everything seemed good and smooth so I turned on the ignition and hit the lock button on the dash. All the doors locked ...except the one we had just repaired. The button stayed in the "up" position.

Checking the window, all good, moving smoothly. I dropped the window down and closed all the doors. Pressed the remote and everything unlocked but the repaired door did the opposite- it locked.
Pressed again and it unlocked while all the others locked. Yup. I'd soldered the connector on backwards

Door card off once again and had a look at the connection. It was backwards all right, but in my defense the wires are very close in color code, both purple, one with a pink tracer and the other with an orange. Had a laugh about it, re-connected, re-assembled door card and all finished. Rear doors operational once more.

Larry

 

I have a 1988 3.6 with an inoperable rear (right) passenger side door. Lock knob won't budge, interior and exterior handles do not operate, window will not roll down, only clicks from driver front door window and right passenger rear door switches. Other three door handles and windows are OK. As rear door hinge bolts are accessible, I thought to remove these and try to trip the handle mechanism to allow the door to be removed. Any other ideas from the forum? Any reason to have a locksmith or body shop use a charley bar to try to open the door? Thanks.

 

Someone else was having this problem- couldn't open the door at all. I think he managed to get the trim panels off with the door shut and reached in. As i recall he had to take the seat out to do it. Once you can get in there you can get to the latch mechanism. As far as the window I have tried disassembling and cleaning out a bad switch and had little luck. Those are another needlessly complex part. Maybe others can give better advice there- I suggest a trip to your favorite used parts supplier. Good luck.