Door handle broke...has anyone seen this before?

[DougAMiller]

Not quite sure if this belongs in exterior or interior. Anyway, yesterday I went out to go to lunch and grabbed the door handle and....nothing. The return spring didn't even pull the handle back. Now I know that the outside door handle is plastic, so I thought it had broken where the linkage connect to it.

I thought I could probably wire something together to get me by while I got a replacement and had it painted. So, after lunch I pulled the door panel and unbolted the door handle and this is what I found.


This lever connects the door handle to the linkage rod, and as you can see, one arm snapped off. It's made of pot metal and I assume was a stress fracture. Fortunately, I had some small pieces of 1/8 inch steel plate lying around on the garage workbench, so after about an hour of cutting, grinding, drilling and bending I had a reasonable facsimile of the part I needed. Put it all back together and it works perfectly.

However, it's strange that as much time as I spend on this forum, I haven't heard of anyone else having this problem.

 

[Jonesy92]

Nice! My brother in law was recently over for the holidays, and we went out to leave to get some groceries, and he ripped the whole outer door handle off. So, I’m now going to be adding the door handle to my list of to-do’s.

 

[Doubeleive]

Nice! My brother in law was recently over for the holidays, and we went out to leave to get some groceries, and he ripped the whole outer door handle off. So, I’m now going to be adding the door handle to my list of to-do’s.

the door handles used to break all the time on the astro van's and safari's, it would be rare to find one without a broken handle that was a real gm failure.

 

[OR VietVet]

I notice sometimes I hit my key fob as I walk toward my Tahoe and ASSUME the door is unlocked and when I grab and pull, it is locked. I hit the fob again and think, "This can't be good on that handle giving it a good YANK to open an unlocked door".

 

[Jonesy92]

I went and searched the local u-pull it shop, and found one, and yes, i said 1. Complete, not broken or crakced door handle. Do they make metal ones? Im almost ready to swap the plastic for metal.