96 LE door won't open from inside

[marragtop]

My daughter has a 96 LE 4dr. The front passenger door will not open from the inside, but will open from the outside handle. She said the inside handle feels normal. She is out of state at college, so I'm trying to determine what the problem potentially could be long distance. Next time she is home, I will only have a weekend to work on it, so I'd like to get any parts I might need ahead of time if feasible. My questions are:

- Do the 96s have any sort of child lock mechanisms that may have been activated?
- To properly diagnose this I assume I need to pull the door panel. Are there any known common problems (linkage unhooked or broken) on this model that could cause this problem?

Thanks in advance for all responses.

[eddie926]

Child locks are only on the rear doors.

Yes, you'll have to pull the door panel to see what's going on.

The most common problem with the door handles is the actual handle itself cracking and breaking off. Sounds like your handle is intact.

Inside the door panel, the handle is attached to the control arms (metal rods that go from the handle to the latch) with two little plastic clips. There's one arm for opening the door and one for locking it. Could be that the control arm popped out of its clip, but not real likely because of the way they attach. Could be that the clip cracked/broke. If it just popped out, you'd just have to pop it back in. If the clip broke, I believe you'd have to replace the entire door handle. If you need a new handle, eBay is your friend.

I've never examined the other end of the control arms where they attach to the latch, so I can't tell you about that end.

The little white clips near the pliers are the plastic clips I'm talking about. The metal rods are the control arms. The one on the bottom is the one to open the door.

[Kep]

The plastic clip that eddie926 pointed out broke on my 90 Camry's door and I had that same problem. Toyota sold the clips (I think at some ridiculous price of $10 for a piece of plastic--but hey...) and it was fixed real easy. Just make sure that your daughter will be home when the parts dept. is open.

There have been several posts showing the door panel being removed. If you do a search for "DIY master door switch" or "door panel" you will come across several. They point out where the fasteners are. The item that I messed up was the bezel around the door handle itself. It was very brittle and I used too much force to try and pry it out. It cracked like a potato chip.

It could be something more involved but that silly plastic clip is very likely.

Kep

[eddie926]

The trick with the bezel around the handle is knowing exactly where the tabs are that hold it in place, and prying in the correct direction on them. I cracked one before too, but now that I know exactly where to pry, it's a piece of cake. Not sure if I have any pictures of that. I'll look and see.