1995 prizm door handle broke (and other stuff)......

[redgtxdi]

OK, so I love my baby but the poor girl's getting long in the tooth. The other day I pulled on the door handle & it snapped right in my hand. The handle's still there enough on the left side that I can use my index finger to pull the handle up but about 80% of the plastic busted off.

Anybody know how hard it is to swap that handle assembly? I swapped the locks w/ the passenger side back in 2005 when I bought the thing cuz the driver's side lock was boogered but passenger side worked great. I got in there & swapped 'em both & it's worked great ever since but that was pretty straightforward & I'm not sure about the whole door handle assembly.

She's also got weird issues now where there's a "pinging" sound when turning left under power and one the steering wheel wobbles when turning right. My headliner's starting to sag and I'm about ready for a new car in gneneral but she's a money maker & I love her.

[Kiwi-Corolla]

I assume you're talking about the exterior door handle? If so it's nice and simple to replace. Remove the door card, pop the arms out of the plastic connectors by using a screwdriver (don't be afraid to give the arm that goes to the lock barrel a bit of force), undo the two bolts on either side of the handle (10mm from memory) and lift the handle out. Then simply remove the cir-clip holding in the lock barrel, swap everything over and do the reversal of removal. Just be sure not to over-tighten the screws that hold the handle in as you can easily crack the plastic.

[redgtxdi]

Just wanted to update here.

I picked up a new aftermarket handle on ebay. (Looked good enough & any junkyard OEM handles, I feared, might be just as brittle) Everything went pretty well fine (had to remember how the interior handle backing came off. Slide-left, slide-right, jerk, lift, curse, pull, curse some more, etc. etc.

Anyway........finally got all the door panel off & proceeded to separate the wire coat hanger connecting rods from everything. (Once you get them out of their half-circle clips, then pushing them up & thru the holes is not bad.

HOWEVER..........Putting the handle back in was a bit of a task & I realized why. My old handle had a broken piece where the door lock cylinder "twists & locks" into its home. As such, it was a piece of cake to install/remove that cylinder. The new one had its piece in tact, of course, so I had to align everything, then twist, lock & hold all together as I put the handle back in place. Finally got the bolts back in. Tightened them to hand tight, then just another 1/4 turn to snug. Put everything back, & all's well again.

Thanks for the advice again, Kiwi! (P.S. Your Corolla is a thing of beauty!)