I just finished changing the door carrier. Unfortunately the two knurls on the pin that inserts into the round hole then rotates 90 degrees to lock the handle in place were so deformed. Basically when the handle was pulled, the door handle would pop out of the door, exposing that cylindrical plastic shaft. I had to gingerly drill a pilot hole down the center of this cylinder, thread it then used a machine screw and washer to keep the handle in the door. Ghetto, but the end result is functional and you would never know that fix was there.


Amazon sent me the wrong door handle carrier so I had to buy one from the parts store this morning at a significant difference in price. However from my observations and since I have seen four of these in the last two weeks, I noticed that the OEM unit was the nicest made. The auto parts unit was very close in quality to the OEM unit. The one from Amazon was garbage and the one from eBay (which broke in only a few days but had hundreds of 5-star reviews) was an absolute POS and the fitment was off (which also may have contributed to unneeded stresses causing the failure).


When the carrier was inside the door and the phillips screw inserted and snugged up (toward front of vehicle), on the opposite side (toward rear of vehicle) there is the square notch that the allen bolt slides through to affix the lock and tumbler to the door and mechanism. This square part of the carrier was an absolute PITA to get it to align and stay in place.

__________________
2006 E53 4.8is - Imola Red 2, Cream Beige all day er’ day