355 exterior door handle broken-help please!

Hi guys-continue to enjoy reading all the very informative posts on the site. Such a great site! Went to take my 355 gts out for drive the other day and went to open the door and "nothing". the door handle feels like it isnt attached to anything. the top was off and the drivers window was down (it was in my garage) so i checked the interior door latch and it worked fine. cycled the door locks a couple times via the alarm remote and still nothing from the exterior door handle. Nothing happened to it, nothing was hit...I have no idea what is going on with it. The night before I had opened it to get something out of the car and it worked fine. My question is:
How hard is it to tear into the door to figure out whats going on and what needs to be fixed. I refuse to drive the car if i have to reach over to unlock the drivers door from the passenger side and then run around and get into the drivers seat...sorry, might be vain..but that is just not cool in to do in an Ferrari. Anyway, if anyone has any experience with this or resources that would be helpful, could please share, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm grounded until i fix the door and the weather is awesome, so I gotta get this thing on the road! Thanks in advance.

 

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Those handles seem to break a lot. I have no idea why, and I have no idea how they might be repairable -- I just have never looked at one carefully enough.

I suppose if you remove the air scoop from the outside of the car, then pull down the two bolts which hold the handle you'll see a broken tab where the wire is attached. Just a guess.

If you need them, they are available:

http://www.ricambiamerica.com/product_info.php?products_id=243127

(gasp!)

 

Been there....done that.

The good news is that it isn't too hard to remove and replace. The bad news is that the handle usually breaks and isn't repairable. Daniel will help you out for sure or you might find a used one.

You can't get to it from inside the door so you need to remove the lower panel (the scoop) on the door and remove the two screws holding the handle in. It comes right out. Simply attach the cable to the new one and put the panel back on. Be very careful to keep track of the washers that act as spacers for the outer door panel since it will mess up the gap on the door and potentially cause some rubbing. No secret to it, just watch out for the little buggers when you remove the bolts on the panel. I think there are some previous threads with some diagrams that might help as well. All in all, it did the whole repair in under two hours. It would have gone faster but I mistakenly started by removing the interior door panel thinking I could get to it from there.

Good luck!

 

This happened to me last year. Dropped it at the dealership to get fixed, thinking it was no big deal. $1000 later I realized I should have called Ricambi and ordered the specific parts...

-R

 

For that much money couldn't you get something made custom out of higher quality materials? Sounds like they may even be a market for this if you had several made and re sold some to fellow owners. Food for thought folks.

Best Regards,

Thomas Carey

 

I found a used one for around $100 if memory serves me correctly.

 

Nice post!

 

Ok, well sorry for the delay responding to all who were kind enough to offer advice/help (was out of town until today). I am SO glad that I decided to check if anyone replied to my post before going to the garage. I had already bought a interior panel removal tool and would have been really pissed if I had gone through the trouble of taking it (interior) out for nothing. I guess the next logical question has to do with not screwing up the lower door panel during removal. I got the washer warning and will be careful about that but is there anything more than the bolts on the underside of the door holding it on? do the screws on either side of the ext. door handle have to be removed to remove the panel? I know these might sound like stupid questions, but mistakes tend to cost alot on these cars and if the handle itself ($540 or so from ricambi) is so expensive, I can't imagine what a lower door panel goes for. Thank you again to all the people who responded. I really appreciate you taking the time to help.

 

I'm trying to remember where all the bolts were but I believe there are some along the front edge of the panel. Maybe someone has a schematic but just look along the edges of the lower panel first and you should be fine.