Driver's door handle. All the door handles are going to need some love, as far as the exteriors go - the finishes are all cracked and/or pitted.
Removal of the handles is easy - one bolt (with a funky shaped metal piece) comes out entirely (pictured just inside the weatherstripping, to the left of the main latch area). Another bolt is accessed through the circular hole, right of the latch area - this one just requires loosening.
Once the rear bolt is removed and the front bolt is loosened, it's just a matter of sliding the handle forward a bit, to allow the forward bolt to pass through the larger opening in the door.
Look ma, no handle!
Next is to remove the latch bits. Here's the latch handle. First order of business is to detach the horizontal bar that the latch moves to open the door.
The bar is attached with a spring-type piece. One has to push the tab (closer to the door) out and then slide it down the bar a bit.
Once that piece is free, the bar can be pulled away from the latch bar easily.
Latch handle is now easily removed, just a pair of bolts to remove.
A similar spring piece holds the other end of the bar on - but this one isn't nearly as accessable with a flathead screwdriver. After poking at it for a couple of minutes, I decided it would be easier to remove the bar once the bar and mechanism were removed from the door.
Inside of the main mechanism.
Four clips remain on the door - these pop off easily. Everything into a baggie!
The last remaining part is what the latch attaches to. Now comes the fun - pretty much all of these bolts, on all four pieces, are stuck. STUCK. And remember the asterisk above? A couple of THOSE bolts are also, currently, stuck fast. At this point, I'm ready to remove all of these bits from the passenger side doors, but cannot, due to a single stubborn bolt. May have to resort to drilling these suckers out. I don't mind losing the bolts, as my current plan is to replace all these bolts with new hardware anyhow. I just fear damaging bits that aren't as easily replaceable.
Rear driver's side door. Completely different setup, due to the lock being on the other end of the door from the main latch. With this one, I just removed everything straight up, and then detached the horizontal bars from everything once it was off the door. Big time/hassle savings!
The one part I'm going to have to hunt for - or come up with an alternative for - is the rubber piece that the horizontal bars thread through, that have a round tab that is pushed through a hole on the inside of the doors, to hold the bars in place. In the above photo, you'll see two of these pieces on the upper bar, one on the lower bar. The original pieces are old and brittle; most have the tab areas snapped off and were hanging free, and those that were still in place, the tabs broke off when removing the bars.
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