Accessing inner driver door

[morphnad]

Have a problem opening the door from outside, and the outside handle isn't broken, so have to guess cable is disconnected from a previous blog comment. So, I pull the door liner off, detach the wire harness connections, and start unbolting the inner steel door panel, with the window in the closed position, and find the window carriage starts pulling away from the panel when I start unbolting it. I began fearing I wouldn't be able to reconnect the bolts to the carriage when reinstalling the panel, so stopped at this point. Question is, is it necessary to remove the window (ugh) to access the inner door, or what is the proper procedure here. The factory repair manual is just about useless on this topic. Also, the front passenger door window won't open from the driver door switch, any ideas guys? Thanks.

[XIS]

I think you might want the window rolled down to do this. Did you try that?

I assume you checked fuses. Does the window roll down with the other door's window switch? I guess the switch could have gone bad (did it get wet or something?)

I wish I had more to add for you.

[morphnad]

Ended up going to a Nissan dealer, and it took a seasoned tech 2 hours to reconnect the cable to the door handle. He had to remove the window to get in there. Told him I didn't ever want to come back again for that, and said to wire the bast*** fast, so he wrapped it with duct tape, lol. If there is a next time, I will tackle removing the window myself, and WIRE that cable end together. The driver door window switch turned out to be shorted on the passenger side function, and was quoted $384 for parts and labor, so, sweeping Ebay and the other hotspots for a cheapie switch, because that is easy for shadetree guys to change out. Anyway, don't grab your EX door handle and accidently let it slam home in cold weather, because the cable WILL come out sooner or later.

[CDNicecube]

So the same thing happened to me last night. It was -20c and somehow the wire from the driver's side door handle to the lock is now disconnected. The handle works, but nothing happens. I can open the door using the inside handle.

I will tackle this,

Morphnad:
-How difficult was it to open the inner door? I am pretty mechanically inclined.
-Any special tools?
-Also, did the tech left the window up or down?
-can you confirm that the tech had to take the window mechanism off totally?
-Now that you saw how he did it, would you do it yourself?
- any other advice?

Thanks

[CDNicecube]

Did it look like this? And which ends of the cable was unattached? The one to the outside door handle or lower down, the hatch one?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AvUCEjVkF_0

[morphnad]

Opening the inner door was fairly easy, popped the liner off after removing 2 screws in the handle and armrest area, disconnected about 5 wire harness blocks, and then the inner panel has several bolts to remove. After removing those bolts is where I stopped when the window mechanism started backing away, and I wasn't sure if I could reattach it without some tool to pull it back to the bolts.

The tech REMOVED the window, not something I was familiar with doing, so if you're comfortable doing that, the rest should be a walk in the park. The window mechanism remained in the door. If you can take your time in a heated garage to sort things out, I would say tackle it. Also, wire that damn cable together so it will NEVER disconnect again. Good luck, and let us know how it went (:

[morphnad]

CDNicecube...Great video, wish I found that one earlier. That guy either works all day doing this on an assembly line, or has 500 IQ, because it doesn't go that smoothly. This isn't exactly the same as the EX35, but close enough to download for future reference. He took the damn door totally apart and reassembled in 21 minutes, not happening in the real world. Take your time, take pics along the way, and refer back to this vid, and things should go smoothly, relatively speaking.

The cable end to the outside door handle was the detached.

[CDNicecube]

Happy to report I fixed it. It took me bout 1:30 hours, with a coffee and going slowly. The video is almost exactly accurate. Four differences:
1) there is only one bold holding the inner leather/plastic panel to the door frame and the bold is behind the inside door lock handle, behind a small plastic cover (use a small pocket screw driver ti lift off the cover and reveal the bolt, like in the video).

2) Also, I took off the black plastic "armrest" ( the one with the 4 window switches/mirror switch) and did not see any screw holding the leather/plastic panel to the door frame. So I just yank off the leather/plastic door panel off the inner door and disconnected the wires.

3) I did not have to take out the door speaker.

4) Lastly the other small difference is the rod holding the outside key lock assembly to the door lock: it was shorter compare to the video.

But everything else in the video is the same.

My problem was actually that the door handle cable was disconnected from the opening latch/mechanism. That mechanism is inside the door, on the other side (inside) of the handle. At the end of the cable is a small ball, meant to slide and lock into a pivoting mechanism that the door handle activates by pulling on the cable which opens the lock at the other end (anyone who looked at a bicycle hand brake knows what I mean). Well, the cable/ball was disconnected and, oddly, managed to move one inch over. I took me a while to figure out where the ball went. I had to take out the door handle mechanism. Once I was able to inspect the mechanism, it was obvious where the cable went and where the ball is supposed to be inserted.

I reinserted it and used a zip tie to make sure it would not move out of its "socket" ever again. Reassembly took me about 20 minutes and I took the opportunity to spray rust proofing inside the door.

Everything works perfectly!

I took pictures but don't know how to post them. If someone could let me know how, I could post them. Next time I could do it in 30minutes I am sure.

Cheers!

Ice

[CDNicecube]

Ok, I am trying to add pictures.

The first one is the cable outside the socket and in fact, on the opposite side of the mechanism where it should be. What you see here is the ball that is at the end of the cable. It is supposed to be attached on the outside door handle mechanism.



This one shows the ball back in the socket


And this last one is with the tie wrap tying the wire / cable to the "back side". This wire will no longer pop out!

[NJGuy]

Ok, I am trying to add pictures.

The first one is the cable outside the socket and in fact, on the opposite side of the mechanism where it should be. What you see here is the ball that is at the end of the cable. It is supposed to be attached on the outside door handle mechanism.


This one shows the ball back in the socket

And this last one is with the tie wrap tying the wire / cable to the "back side". This wire will no longer pop out!

Nice! Thanks for sharing the pics.