Drivers Door won't open - after changing handle carrier

[Purplefade]

Check out FCP Euro, great service and so far great parts:

https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/bmw...or-51337165596



Sent from my iPhone using Xoutpost.com

[andrewwynn]

I had the exact opposite problem: the outer sheath rusted and got longer. This effectively made my cable shorter. I pulled the outer sheath out of the end, cut out a couple rings of the rusted expanded steel and made my cable effectively about 1/8" longer and solved my problem.

When I repaired my DHC recently I noticed it was a crazy additional force required to pull the door handle through the cable so I'm working on a no outer sheath solution (at least for the front doors).

I'm thinking of adding brass/bronze bushings to guide the inner cable then adjust the length perfectly to get it to work.

[andrewwynn]

I have had to tweak the cable length before when swapping parts if the cable is slightly too tight it will
not reset the latch and it won’t grab to unlatch the door. if the distance needed is just one or 2 mm you can bend a piece of metal that holds the end of the cable

[shedtastic]

Originally Posted by andrewwynn

I have had to tweak the cable length before when swapping parts if the cable is slightly too tight it will
not reset the latch and it won’t grab to unlatch the door. if the distance needed is just one or 2 mm you can bend a piece of metal that holds the end of the cable

Yup, I'd have been good with this approach (and in fact swapped the cable over) but once I realized the handle didn't fit properly (which explains why it kept twisting awkwardly) I gave up with the eBay part.

I will say that I am pretty impressed with the construction of the eBay part for the money, I really think that they just supplied me one for a different BMW model.

[andrewwynn]

I've had to make minor Dremel adjustments


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[shedtastic]

Well I still had an "oh crap" moment: I've now fitted the BMW OEM door handle carrier & it is clear that this one was at least designed to fit. Handle works perfectly. I had to bodge a bit because the attachment points for the exterior handle were now shot (loose where the plastic pin fits in at one end, and the metal pin at the other end I must have pulled loose by over tightening the nut.. doh) from repeated removal and refitting with the earlier incorrect carrier part..

But (fortunately before I'd refitted the interior trim panel) the door wouldn't lock / unlock when I use the central locking button. As if the lock actuator was dead.

Turned out to be (seemingly) a loose connection at the electric window switch, so worth checking that if you have the same issue.. All sorted now.

[andrewwynn]

Good point: the actuator goes through the door switch assembly so for example door lock won't work if the door switch is removed for any reason. So, for testing purposes you need to attach the door switch assembly. I do that outside of the door panel before reassembly.

Also: for for and finish there is some finesse with the DHC for sure. It has a convex surface that mates with a concave surface of the door inside. I like to leave the screws both quite loose and wiggle the part until it finds the "fingerprint" of th door.

Be very careful witg non OEM parts. The spring has less than two mm clearance to the window glass and I've put in DHC that the spring actually scraped on the glass. I cut the end to fit but it's a warning. You can. See pic where I mentioned the fix. I think in my awr-fix dhc thread