Thank you Alex for the post. It was great talking to you today.
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Nick's Fix - Exterior Door Handle - A Tip to Facilitate Placement of Factory Spring
Everyone,
My driver's side door handle broke this past Saturday while we were at the Maggie Vally Rally. When I pulled on the door handle, which offered some unusual resistance, I heard a snap sound and heard something fall inside the door. Trouble for sure. I took the door panel off and at the bottom of the door I found a portion of a pot metal part which had broken off. I walked around until I found "Dictator", and he said that I needed "Nick's Fix". He gave me Nick's phone number and I called him to discuss ordering his repair kit. Dick was quick to issue a warning that while the fix is great, getting the factory spring back into the proper tensioned position was a bit of a "bit*h".
Nick was very prompt in shipping his repair kit to me. I got around to working on it today. Man, Dick was not kidding about the factory spring. For me, the long end of the spring was VERY difficult to get repositioned properly. It kept slipping off of my flat head screwdriver. Talk about frustration. After about 45 minutes of failed attempts with just the flat head screwdriver, I got creative and came up with a simple way to allow grabbing the end of the spring and pulling it to slip over the existing pin to create the required tension. I grabbed a fishing hook with a relatively large eyelet. I cut off the hook barb (for obvious safety reasons), and I also spread the eyelet, forming a small "hook", to allow it to be removed after having grabbed the spring. See attached photo below.
This worked out very nicely, Nick's Fix works very well and will be very durable since it is machined out of steel and not made of pot metal. Nick obviously thought this repair problem out very thoroughly and came up with a clever repair. So, I thought I would share my experience and what I came up with to facilitate the repositioning of the factory spring.
I might add that Nick was EXTREMELY helpful and patient on the phone with me throughout the process. I hope my suggestion of this "assist tool" helps those of you who might need to perform the repair at some point.
Alex
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My driver's side door handle broke this past Saturday while we were at the Maggie Vally Rally. When I pulled on the door handle, which offered some unusual resistance, I heard a snap sound and heard something fall inside the door. Trouble for sure. I took the door panel off and at the bottom of the door I found a portion of a pot metal part which had broken off. I walked around until I found "Dictator", and he said that I needed "Nick's Fix". He gave me Nick's phone number and I called him to discuss ordering his repair kit. Dick was quick to issue a warning that while the fix is great, getting the factory spring back into the proper tensioned position was a bit of a "bit*h".
Nick was very prompt in shipping his repair kit to me. I got around to working on it today. Man, Dick was not kidding about the factory spring. For me, the long end of the spring was VERY difficult to get repositioned properly. It kept slipping off of my flat head screwdriver. Talk about frustration. After about 45 minutes of failed attempts with just the flat head screwdriver, I got creative and came up with a simple way to allow grabbing the end of the spring and pulling it to slip over the existing pin to create the required tension. I grabbed a fishing hook with a relatively large eyelet. I cut off the hook barb (for obvious safety reasons), and I also spread the eyelet, forming a small "hook", to allow it to be removed after having grabbed the spring. See attached photo below.
This worked out very nicely, Nick's Fix works very well and will be very durable since it is machined out of steel and not made of pot metal. Nick obviously thought this repair problem out very thoroughly and came up with a clever repair. So, I thought I would share my experience and what I came up with to facilitate the repositioning of the factory spring.
I might add that Nick was EXTREMELY helpful and patient on the phone with me throughout the process. I hope my suggestion of this "assist tool" helps those of you who might need to perform the repair at some point.
Alex
