Making My Own Door Handles

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Zanama

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I've been playing around with the idea of making some door handles. I've had 3 gmt400's and have never gotten along with the door handles. Plus my kids have trouble opening the door and its a PITA to have to walk around every time to let them in and then there's the fact that the lift I'll be putting on it won't make it any easier.

I've looked up the Topkick/Kodiak door handles. Can't find the lock/latch rods anywhere and before I go and fab up my own or start messing with using cables, I'm trying to explore my options.

Originally I thought f150 door handles would do the trick, so would NBS handles, or even H2 handles. Problem being, I don't have access to any of the necessary tools to do that sort of swap properly. Much less access to a donor vehicle.

So I finally decided to see what I could make work. I ended up ordering an H2 door handle to start with because the plastic ones are insanely cheap on amazon and I'm just going to use it for mock up at the moment. Also got a cheap OBS handle too.

The idea is to graft the pull handle functionality of the H2 onto the OBS handle. This way I can maintain factory handle fastening and hopefully I can rig something up to make the lock/latch rods work like factory. It will be a bit of trial and error but we'll see. If it comes out pretty good I'll send it off to be scanned and reproduced so I can have replacements in the event of breakage or failure of any component.

Starting with this (I actually ordered the passenger side but couldn't find a detailed pic):
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The OBS handle for reference:

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And the H2 handle disassembled and ready to start hacking:
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Definitely not for the faint of heart. But if it comes out like I think it will it should look pretty good and won't be as beefy as the Topkick handles nor as round as the NBS handles. We'll see. I plan on using epoxy to get it all back together and brace it as best I can. I'm not familiar with what would be best so I'll have to research that. I want it to come out as quality as possible but realistically it will fail over time unless I get it reproduced as a solid piece.
 

kkirwan71

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Cool idea. Would like to see what you end up with but I'd just use top kick handles and get rods and junk from rock auto

sent from my glade air freshner
 

Zanama

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Cool idea. Would like to see what you end up with but I'd just use top kick handles and get rods and junk from rock auto

sent from my glade air freshner


Can't find the rods anywhere. I've called all over. Before I go spend $200 or however much on all the rest of it I'd like to know I can get all of the parts.

And there's not a single yard around me that has a topkick/kodiak/or even a 3500hd so that's how I've arrived at this venture.
 

Xanatost

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If you go to a Chevy dealership they can print out a list with phone numbers of all the dealerships that still have them in stock. Just go in with the parts number. That's how I did mine and let me tell you there are not a lot left out there. Just an idea but I like where you going with yours :) Will be watching
 

Zanama

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It's been in the works forever now. Had a pretty decent mockup done and then had to set it on the back burner.

Sent the dimensions to an engineer friend of mine to see if I could get him to draw it up in cad for me and he's been backed up as well. It's still in the works just a slower process than I anticipated.

Main thing it will come down to is being able to find somewhere to manufacture then for me. I've talked to a few places overseas but they want the cad file. If I can get my mockup functioning I'll just send it to them to scan and then duplicate out of a solid piece.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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