DIY Fix: Door Handle not retracting

[01e]

We're probably all aware that the exterior door handles are a common failure point. There's been quite a few forum threads on them. Honda's solution to this is replacing the entire door handle unit, often citing "water ingress" as the cause of the problem - thankfully, this is something that they cover under warranty.

But, cars are coming out of warranty now, and at an alleged £350/side for a replacement, we probably don't want to go down that route. It's also horribly wasteful to replace the door handles when there's actually nothing wrong with them (yip, that's right, nothing is actually wrong with them... read on...)

Doing this for the first time took around 2 hours. With the guide below, I think you could probably do this in under an hour, but take your time as if you rush there's lots of chances to break clips, scratch the paint on the handle, or dirty up your interior.

I'll report back if this doesn't provide a long-term fix, but I am pretty confident that it will (and let's face it, new handles themselves seem to last as little as 6 months sometimes!)

Symptoms - how to tell if this guide is for you
If your exterior door handle doesn't (always) retract fully on its own, but does occasionally show signs of movement and retracts relatively easily if you push it with your finger, then chances are this fix will work.

I'm doing this on my passenger door, but I imagine that the driver's door is basically the same.

Step Zero - tools you'll need
10mm socket, short extension bar
Plastic pry tool
Some universal grease
Small cable tie

Have some garage wipes, kitchen roll, etc. to keep your hands clean.

Step One - remove the door card

I'd recommend opening the drivers window opening the passenger door, and then disconnecting the battery before going further. This is an extra precaution since we're unplugging some stuff from the loom, and don't want anything bad to happen. Lowering the driver's window means you won't damage the window or frame when it doesn't open a bit when you open the door with no battery power.

You'll need to carefully pop off the trim piece behind the door handle (I recommend carefully using a plastic pry tool or small screw driver in the small slit at the top. Be gentle (Honda broke the clips on my driver's side one).

You'll then need to remove the trim piece inside the door pull. Same as above. Use a plastic pry tool at the top (against the fabric part of the door card)

Undo the three screw's that you've now exposed (two short ones at the door handle, one long one at the pull).

Starting at the bottom near the speaker, using your fingers (or suitable pry tool) carefully start pulling the door card away from the door. It's held in with a lot of clips and it's pretty well stuck on.

At the top, the door card snaps into a plastic channel at the window. Just carefully pull it away (the channel is horizontal - you don't need to lift it or hinge it or anything).

I recommend at this stage making sure that the fixing clips have all come out with the doorcard. If any are stuck in the door, carefully remove them at this point and re-attach them into the doorcard by sliding them in.

The door card will then be "attached" by two connectors, one connector clip, and the door handle.

To remove the door handle, take some long nose pliers and carefully squeeze in the metal clips, this will allow the door handle to detach from the doorcard and remain attached to the cables (don't be tempted to undo the cables from the doorhandle, leaving the door handle attached to the door!).

There's one speaker wire that you'll need to disconnect, along with the wiring clip that goes to the door card - gently pull on it and use a plastic pry tool to push in the clips to get it out of the door.

The big plug that connects to the window switch was really awkward for me to get it out, though in theory you just push the release in and pull it. Be patient, and you'll get it.

Unplug the connector that goes to the edge of the door, and carefully remove the wiring clip.

Once the doorcard is off, carefully peel back the waterproof sheet. Be careful not to get the sealant on you; it's messy and sticky stuff. Be especially careful not to get it on your doorcard or any of the interior.


Step Two = remove the door handle
The door handle itself is held in with just 3 bolts, and is plugged in to two electrical connectors.


Unplug the two electrical plugs, and on the flex from the doorhandle disconnect the wire clip from the door (I'd recommend just using a plastic pry tool to pull the whole thing out)

On the door itself, there's a rubber bung that provides easy access to the third bolt. Use a plastic pry tool to carefully remove this.

Next, detach the door handle linkage. This is a metal rod that runs almost vertically towards the rear edge of the door. If you gentle manipulate the rod upwards at the door handle, wiggling it slightly, it will move up beyond its normal travel. Once you get this, you can push down on the other part (attached to the door) and the rod will easily slide out. Be careful not to dislodge the yellow plastic collar from the part attached to the door.

Using a 10mm socket (and likely an extension) remove the three bolts. One is easily visible towards the top towards the front of the handle, one is easily visible through the hole where you removed the rubber bung, and the third is towards the bottom - it's a little trickier to get to, but not too hard.

Remove all three of these. The door handle itself is still going to be attached to the door via a plastic hook, so don't worry it won't fall.

Be extra careful with this bit, because you don't want to scratch the paint on your door handle. Double check that everything is disconnected, and gently lift the assembly up and pull it away from the door. It's incredibly light, so this is quite easy to do. If you want to be extra-careful, you could put some detailers tape on the outside of the door handle to protect the paint in case you do knock it against the door as you remove it.


Step three - Examine the mechanism
At this point, you're going to be tempted to examine the mechanism and see how it all works.

Undo the two small screws to remove the plastic cover.

It's pretty simple, and you can see that whilst there's a few moving parts, it is pretty unlikely that anything in this will actually break. You'll see that if you move the handle yourself, everything seems to work as it should.

If anything is broken, the rest of this guide won't help you.


Step four - getting the handle apart for lubricating
So if nothing's actually broken, why doesn't it work? Well, it seems to be that as dirt and grime builds in the handle itself, it simply puts up too much resistance for the spring to overcome. I tried lubricating a few bits without further disassembly, but mine was too far gone for that. You might get lucky, but I'd encourage you to go a little further.

Snip the cable tie that holds the wires together - we need to get a bit of extra flex in these wires.

Using a screw driver, gently remove the pin that acts as the pivot point for the door handle. Once it's out, feed through the wire to get enough slack and gently remove the handle from the housing.

You'll be able to see at this point that if you manipulate the mechanism with the handle disconnected, that it all moves very freely, confirming that the handle's movement/pivot itself is where the problem is.

Step five - lubrication
I applied some general purpose grease to:
1. The pin itself and the channel it passes through
2. The upper and lower contact points between the handle and the housing (at the points the pin passes through)
3. The 'inside edge' of the handle

Step six - put it all back together
Putting it back together really is just a case of a reversal of the steps above.

Locate the handle into the housing and Insert the pin (it should slide in very easily). Double check that the handle retracts perfectly.
Add a new cable tie around the wires, attaching them to the housing.

I'd recommend also cleaning up the old grease on the other parts and replacing it with new.

Re-attach the plastic cover piece with its two screws.

Step seven - door handle back in the door, and door card
Carefully insert re-insert the handle/housing to the door, using the plastic hook to hold it roughly in position. Insert (but don't fully tighten) the three bolts. Once they are all in, tighten them up. Don't over tighten.

Triple check at this point that it's all working properly.

Re-attach the two plugs, and secure the wiring back to the door.

Re-connect the handle linkage, being careful not to displace the yellow collar.

Re-insert the rubber bung from the door

Re-attach the waterproof sheet.

Plug the electric window switch and speaker back into the door. Snap the interior handle back into place, and re-clip the speaker wire to the doorcard.

At this point, everything is connected up so we can re-connect the battery and quadruple check that the handle works properly when we lock and unlock the car.

Carefully align the snap-fixings on the doorcard and push them all into place.


Re-do the 3 screws, carefully snap the trim pieces back on.

Step eight - admire your work

Celebrate:
(a) the convenience and time saving of a simple fix versus travelling to the dealer (probably once for a diagnostic, and again for a fix!)
(b) saving money
(c) saving the environment by not throwing out a perfectly good part.

[londiniumperson]

Thanks

[MrM83]

Great write up.

Makes me curious as to why Honda replace the entire handle mechanism if this is a viable fix?

[MaXPainT]

I admire the courage it takes to not only go blind into something like this but also document the whole process. Although I have to admit, that for someone like me, it needs more photos of the steps in the beginning or even a Youtube video to attempt it by myself. Sounds like there are lots of plastic clips to break

I had the issue last winter after washing the car in a car wash in below-freezing temperatures. I then attempted to spray some silicon lubricant on the shaft of the handle when it was in its retracted position. It didn't help right away but the issue was gone in a couple of days. Considering that the DYI fix essentially involves taking the handle out and greasing it, do you think it is possible to achieve the same (or at least similar) effect without taking the handle apart (by spraying it from outside)? I just don't think that many of us (including me) have the balls to attempt the full disassembling process

[Malcs]

Reading peoples issues with the handles, I thought maybe a preventative solution would be spraying with silicon from the outside on a regular basis. My handles seem fine at the moment, but worry about water freezing during Winter and frosty mornings and putting extra strain on what appears to be a fragile mechanism.

[EEEE]

Great write up, thanks for taking pictures and posting, i'd have done similar if I was outside the warranty period! Roll on April the 1st

Step four - getting the handle apart for lubricating
So if nothing's actually broken, why doesn't it work? Well, it seems to be that as dirt and grime builds in the handle itself, it simply puts up too much resistance for the spring to overcome. I tried lubricating a few bits without further disassembly, but mine was too far gone for that. You might get lucky, but I'd encourage you to go a little further.

So in the end, did you manage to fix the non-returning handle or not? Both of mine went 'notchy' , not just a week spring or extra resistance feeling when pushing the handle back home, but a distinctive nastyness when pushing it home. When you said it was too far gone, how do you mean? The handle was more free, but still not returning?

My prime candidate is the white, spring loaded retainer, which acts as a 'stay' to keep the handle pointed out, without the main central spring forcing back against the geared actuator. It seems poorly aligned and no doubt the sharp edge eventually wears away. However my spare handle is off a sub 600miler and seems perfect. I will need to wire up a microcontroller and actuate it a few thousand times to simulate 3 years / 20kmiles.

When the actuator pushes the handle out, the white plastic retainer pops out and keeps the handle pressed out. The motor can then return and push back this white plastic retainer back in, releasing the handle. When I manually actuate the handle without the motor, the force and feeling needed to push the handle in matches the 'nastyness' I felt, its almost as if the motor is not returning fully, or the stay is not releasing...

Overall I was a bit disappointed with how it looked internally, not quite as sturdy as id have expected.

[01e]

So in the end, did you manage to fix the non-returning handle or not?

Yes, working perfectly following the cleaning & greasing.


Mine have never gone "notchy" as you describe; they simply haven't had the necessary spring tension to retract.

From the point the first one started to fail (when the car was about a year old) my suspicion was that it was always just a case of something needing lubricated, as it did sometimes work and sometimes managed to make it part way. But of course, Honda wanted to replace the whole handle.

Rapidly hitting lock/unlock a few times would also sometimes manage to get it to retract properly on its own. But (when it should have been retracted and the internal mechanism had moved) it was only ever minimal finger force necessary to get it to go in, and it was always smooth. Subsequent failures were always the same, starting off intermittent but gradually getting worse, but with occasional periods (sometimes lasting days or weeks) of working perfectly.

Overall I was a bit disappointed with how it looked internally, not quite as sturdy as id have expected.

I was amazed at how light the whole housing was when I first removed it from the door. I hadn't expected the entire thing (pretty much) to be plastic.

My best guess is that the design itself is ok and well tested but has potentially been manufactured down to a cost, including things like inadequate lubricant. There was no trace of any sort of lubricant at all on the pin or the other parts of the handle pivot (just on some of the internal mechanism).

I think there's potential to remanufacture some of the internals with 3D printing, which if they do wear might be the way for the community to go

[Rob83]

My passenger handle doesn't fully retract anymore, but there's no clicking issues or anything. I was thinking of just squirting some lubricant into the cranny - guess that won't do anything?

[01e]

I don’t think you’d manage to get it where you need it. The tolerances between the contact surfaces are pretty tight when it’s all fitted, and you can’t really get into the back part.

I’ve tried it in the past, but never got any success

But other than being a bit messy, probably no harm in trying.

[upsilon]

Great documentation, thanks for sharing!