DennisT
I'm Awesome
What a mess. My '96 1500 came to me with flaky driver's door inside handle and intermittent power lock actuation. I spent all day today working on this door per 1A-Auto's you tube. Had new inside handle and new pwr. actuator. Got door apart and found the lock rod unhooked at inside door handle end. POS former owner apparently had pwr. actuator trouble, and ty-rap'd the actuator back in !!!!!!! Tries to work while flopping around!! Nothing wrong with inside handle but replaced it anyway. Properly reattached pwr. actuator, (which works fine) Really awkward getting these doors back together. Finally got middle panel partially attached. Went to attach rods. The one for inside handle went on fine. But the one for the pwr. actuator required me to move the plastic manual inside lock slider to the position allowing the most room for the rod. When rod attached, it can't move anywhere. Just like the rod is too long !!! I'm stumped!! It's just like the PO tried to use the wrong, (longer) lock rod. I know L and R rods are different. I WISH I had a photo of a LH rod and a RH rod, side-by-side, and identified so I could see the difference. ANY pictures around? LMC has diagram but does not show difference. Bends? Lengths? I need to get this truck on the road this week but don't know what to do next. I might take a chance that the closest wrecking yard, (50 miles at $5.20/gal), would have one. I need to know what's the right thing to be in there. Worse, do I have to rip out the door edge complete door latch to switch lock rod end???????? I keep hoping I'm missing something. I know my problem is an oddity, so hard for folks to comment, but if anyone has thoughts, I'd appreciate hearing them.