OK- Thanks for the update. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

If anyone out there has any additional ideas/input in case I don't get lucky, I'm all ears.

frozen door handle
 

Thank you very much for the post. Great pictures as well.

I just fixed my door last night. We had a heavy rainfall followed by a deep freeze and I could only get into my car from the back doors. I believe the problem is the door handle carrier. Picture

Water penetrates from the outer cable due to a nipple which has a flat top. The newer assembly has a rounded nipple which you can see in the picture. When I took mine apart the assembly was in perfect condition and my car is 10 years old. I smeared the end with grease, so we'll see if that fixes the problem. If not, I'll have to replace it or try to find a new cover.

One other thing, I looked at some after market replacement parts and most of them still have the flat top nipple. The only I saw that doesn't is one made from EZ.

EZ Door handle carrier

How to open the rear door when the outside and the inside handles don't work? I just changed the carrier on my right rear door with an aftermarket one. It worked well initially for several time then suddenly both handles don't work. When I put the after market one in, I noticed the cable is had a little more tension in rest position than the original one. I think the lock arm was stuck in middle position and did not go all the way down. I was happy when seeing this write-up and tried on my rear door but I think the position of lock is different on rear door. Appreciate if anyone can point me to the direction on how to open the rear door

I think you will need to remove the door card to access the lock . Sounds like one of the levers is not positioning properly .
The rear seat bench just pulls up from the front edge , no screw fixings , this will allow the door card removal with the door closed .

is there a write up for a fix for the inside door handle?

my passenger side door handle is has stopped working. it doesnt op the door and is just flimsy (it moves all over) but the door handle on the outside still works fine...

Wow nice thread. Subscribed.

Great thread, the tip with the wire saved me hours of headscratching, door was open in 10 seconds. Thank you again

Thanks for the write-up. great pics.

Kevin

Awesome write up, managed to fix my brother-in-laws X5 today by following the excellent explanation. The step by step description was spot on.

Many thanks, saved him a pretty penny.

Hello,

In my car I needed to replace the driver door actuator, some plastic thiny broke, so the inside door handle wasn't working anymore.
After replacement the driver door was not working anymore on the key or console button.
I removed fuses 20 and 24, next it was working again.

Hope this helps some one...
Greetings!