Simon928

Hi everyone! Winter is fast approaching over here and I figure that now is as good a time as any to start attacking some of the nagging issues on my recently purchased '90 S4. One of the problems that the car had when I bought it is that the driver’s side door is a pain in the *** to open. As you can see in the attached video, if I pull the handle normally the door won’t open, but if I push my thumb over the top of the handle as I pull the handle then the door finally opens. The door opens perfectly when I open it from the inside though. Any ideas as to what exactly would be causing this issue? I assume that someone must’ve taken the door apart for some reason or another and then didn’t align things properly when they put it back together. I just thought that I would seek out the collective wisdom of Rennlist in order to focus my attention on a specific area before I start poking around indiscriminately and mess things up that aren’t broken to begin with.

I don’t know if this is related or not, but manually locking/unlocking my driver side door doesn’t also perform the same function on the passenger side like it’s supposed to, though locking/unlocking the passenger side does cause the driver side to perform the corresponding function as it is supposed to. I don’t know if the same thing could be misaligned and causing both of these problems or if they are completely separate, but I thought I would mention it just in case. I remember seeing a lot of old posts about the door lock issue but I couldn’t find anything related to my particular issue with the door handle. Any insight would be appreciated!

hacker-pschorr

I'm going to guess the internal hinge is cracked, very common. Here is the write-up on how to fix it:

https://rennlist.com/forums/928-foru...otos-long.html

Eventually it will totally fail and you will not be able to open the door from the outside.

MainePorsche

Common phenomenon in the often used driver's handle. See Hacker's link. Strike before the bearing plate completely separates from the grab plate as the crack expands. Then there will be no opening from the outside.

Crumpler

Rite of passage Simon!

Not overly hard, just fiddly and time consuming.
It's okay to experiment with new forms of profanity while you do it BTW.

Oh, and Stan's trick of mask tape on the exterior handle to hold it in place is worth your time when you do it.

Simon928

Well hey, if I have a problem it's nice to have a step-by-step picture tutorial showing me how to fix it. Thanks so much for the heads up! That post will be invaluable. I already called Tom and added the hinge to an existing order. Now I'll be able to put some of my upcoming vacation days to good use.

dr bob

Simon--

I found that a ball-end Allen wrench (long 3/8-drive kind for me) made this job a lot easier. Saves you from trying to blindly turn the screws through the hinge into the outer handle 1/6th of a turn at a time with just your fingertips and zero visibility. Put a shop rag immediately under the handle to catch anything that gets loose, before it falls into the abyss inside the door. Magnet will be your friend. A ratcheting box (GearWrench will help with getting the "door beam" bolts out too. Short one after you break the bolts loose.

You'll have the door panel off completely. If your inner door handle plastic support at the door panel is cracked, have Tom send you the repair kit for that too. Nice steel plate restores the integrity of the armrest and surrounding stuff.

Simon928

Thanks for the additional tips Dr Bob! I have all of the tools that you mention, so it looks like I'll be putting them to good use. I've had to take a bunch of stuff apart on the door of my old '84, so I know what a pain in the butt in is to work blind in such a cramped area. I don't relish the thought of going in there again, but at least now I know exactly what to look for as opposed to taking everything apart and fiddling around.

Randy V

Welcome to the club. You aren't a true 928 enthusiast until you've done this repair job at least once!

mj1pate

Done for both my doors last summer. A bit of advise: once the latch has been reassembled:
Once I closed the passenger door after replacing its interior latch, the door locked and refused to unlock by key, ****, or central lock button. After considerable pergatory inducing language and fear of having to destroy a door panel (already attached), I figured out that I could force unlock by way of a narrow screw driver down between outside window gasket and the window. The cause for this was that the interior latch had fractured before I bought the car and a PO had extended a latch connecting rod to compensate. When I replaced the internal latch, the combined length of the internal latch's reach disabled the correct latch action. So, common sense says that after replacing the interior latch, try closing/opening/locking/unlocking the door BEFORE adding the interior door panel.

dr bob

Also--

BE NOT TEMPTED, in spite of causal guidance to the contrary in a few of the instructions, to leave out the lock/latch shield when you reassemble. Besides helping maintain the anti-theft protection, it also protects from rain and wash water intrusion into the lock and hinge. Take a look at how much corrosion is present at the bottom end of the shield to get an idea how it's protected the rest of the bits in there.

Simon928

I just thought that I'd chime in with how this issue ended up getting resolved. It looks like the door handle hinge was in fact the problem. I took it off and a cursory inspection didn't reveal any cracks or anything, but I replaced it with a new one and now the door handle works perfectly, so something must've been wrong with it. I also re-installed the protection plate at the advice of dr bob. It only took an extra 5 minutes or so of fiddling around so it wasn't a terribly difficult endeavour. All in all this was probably one of the easier jobs that I've done on the car so many thanks to everyone for correctly diagnosing my problem and pointing to Alan's guide. With the pictures to show me the way it ended up being a very straightforward job.

dr bob

We love a happy ending!