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Passenger door won’t open


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I bumped the lock on the passenger door, now it won’t open. I ripped off the door panel from the interior, knocked the rod off on the handle end in the process. With the panel off, I still can’t find what releases the door near the latch. What am looking (mostly feeling) for?

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I got the drivers side released and it seems to open and close fine, though it does seem pretty gunked up with old sticky dirty grease. Any recommendations on what to spray on it to remove it and then relubricate with something better?

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I thought we had a writeup in the DIY but alas, I don't see it anywhere.   If you want to clean it in place, any decent de-greaser should be fine.  taking it out and soaking it would be better, but it depends on how much of a project you're looking for. (if memory serves me, I think the entire door needs to be disassembled to get at the latch?  it's been many years since I had to do that)

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I've used penetrating oil to clean out latch mechanisms, then shot them full of spray grease. Seemed to work pretty well.

 

The door won't unlatch so long as the latch is in the locked position. I'm guessing the rod fell off the interior lock button or something? Have you tried unlocking with the key?

Last week at work we had an exterior rear door handle that quit working. When I pointed out to a coworker that the interior handle still worked his response was "maybe it's the child lock" and as I went through the classic "noooOOOOO!!!" lunge, he engaged the child lock and swung the door closed. I managed to get it back open again, I'm sure you will too. 

 

Does this help at all?

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There is a trick I found that works on the 97+ doors and may work on the older doors as well.  

- pull the lower window trim off the outside of the door.  This will create a roughly 3/8" gap between the outer sheet metal and the glass.  Its hard to get off the first time but will go back on just fine once it's off. 

- bend a metal coat hanger to form a long hook 

- run the hook down the lock side of the door about 5 inches from the edge of the door and run it down until it won't go any further

- pull the hook towards the rear of the door and pull up slowly until you feel it hook the latch mechanism

- once it hooks it, firmly pull up and back and it will unlock and open the door

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14 hours ago, Dzimm said:

- bend a metal coat hanger to form a long hook 

- once it hooks it, firmly pull up and back and it will unlock and open the door

Good advice, hope thieves in my neighborhood don't see this LOL. 

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1 hour ago, Dzimm said:

Trust me, if they want in your vehicle, they WILL get in.  Bastids.. 

Oh, i know it... I just saw about 15 movies scenes play out in my head when I read your post... I'm gonna be installing a hidden kill switch, hopefully this weekend on my MJ now that it's parked outside.

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I’ve had a rough week.

 

I drove the comanche to work yesterday and managed to leave the lights on. Battery was dead by lunch time and needed a jump. My co-worker buddy stopped by to help out. Randomly, he walked over to the passenger door and opened it. Knowing it wasn’t working on Monday, he said, did you fix this? My response... nope. It’s working again like nothing was ever wrong. It was way warmer on the day it wouldn’t open. I’m perplexed. Now I just need to reattach the rod to the inner handle again since it fell off in my attempt to fix it from the inside. Another day. 

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MJ XJ's doors did this to me this winter. Forgot that. I moved it this weekend and the hatch popped open on me... I guess whatever held it closed let go as it warmed up recently.

8 hours ago, Skorpyo said:

Good advice, hope thieves in my neighborhood don't see this LOL. 

Meh. Don't lock my doors anyway. After moving to Alberta almost a year ago I've got into the habit of pulling the key out of the ignition but not having the door open when I grab the handle is too much of a pain in the @$$. 

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