Greetings, For some months the passenger door handle my '69 246 has been stuck and the door only opened from the inside. Being on the passenger side there has been no great hurry to fix it but have now tried to do so. Removing the inside panel I have found that the lock mechanism works fine and the problem is that the shaft to which the external handle is attached is stuck fast in the sleeve inside the door. I have removed the two nuts and the cam that sits on the end of this shaft and tried to turn it with spanners on the replaced nuts, soft grip pliars etc to no avail. I have tried lubricant from the top on the outside and this has acheived nothing. Can anyone advise me if there is some other locking mechanism on this shaft near the top which I am missing. Difficult to see without removing window glass etc which I am trying to avoid at this stage. I am assuming that the chrome finger pull is fastened securely/permanently on to the top of this shaft and can see the small 'brass' bush below this handle as the shaft enters the door skin below the handle. Obviously reluctant to use more than nominal force for fear of damage to very soft materials. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Clive B
Clive - in an ideal world it will simply lift out. Once you remove the two nuts holding tight to the brass cam that pulls the cable, there is nothing to hold it from lifting out. HOWEVER, Having removed a number of these, there are two common issues. First, water, weather, and wind-driven dust gets in there and corrodes/rusts the rod to the chrome sleeve. It takes a great deal of grunting and groaning to work it out without breaking it. Rust penetrator, etc., and gentle pressure. I suspect your rod will be pitted. Once out you will want to polish it with a wire wheel and some good grease. Second, is that sometimes the rod developes a bend, and hence you are pulling a slightly bent rod out of a straight sleeve, and it can bind. The sleeve itself can be removed from the door, with the combination of the sleeve and handle/rod lifting out. You might try to simply tap the rod from the bottom to try and get both to lift out. Place a nut on the end of the rod so that you are tapping the nut (screwed on to be flush with the end of the rod) rather than the unexposed end of the rod, which might ruin the threads or mushroom the rod-end such that it will never come out of the sleeve. Good luck... Jim S.
Clive, Keep in mind, the cam (which is steel in your car) is also threaded. First I would loosen the bottom retaining nut, then the cam, then the top retaining nut. Confirm that the handle is in fact seized (which it probably is) then proceed with Jim's recomendation for extraction. If you choose to use heat, put a wet towel on the outside of the door to keep it cool. It doesn’t take much to build up heat inside the door (especially being aluminum) and ruin the paint on the outside. I, know this first hand. On another note, your cable is probably attached to the lock mechanism, not the cam ( my ’70 is that way). B. Regards, Steve
I had the same thing happen on the same side. Seldom used so corrosion took over. I used penetrating oil and tapped from above and below with a soft hammer. Took 3 days but finally moved. Keep adding penetrating oil. There is nothing to stop the shaft from turning and once the shaft is out and everything cleaned there is lots of clearance. I now hit the shafts with 3&1 oil when I touch up the carb linkage bearings and all the hinges. Never happened again. John
Rost-off from wurth may do the trick. It did for me. Same thing, passenger side. Like John says, just keep hitting it with penetrating oil. Nice thing about rost-off is it'll climb, so you can spray from the top and bottom. Spray, tap, spray tap. DM
Clive, Steve's observation is very important. The cam (which I believe is brass in the 246) is threaded onto the rod, and sandwiched between the two locking nuts. I neglected to mention this. From your description of the problem I thought that you had already removed the cam. Jim S.
Thanks everyone for great feedback. My cam is indeed threaded and has been removed along with the two securing nuts. I have tried lubricant from top but not yet from bottom. I suspect that the shaft is indeed 'bent' in the sleeve which along with corrosion is the root cause of the problem. You have answered my concern that there was some other 'connection' which I was missing so now it is 'tap, oil, tap,oil,'. The damp cloth on the exterior paintwork is a great suggestion as I was afraid to use any form of heat for fear of causing paint damage on a very pricey paint job. Thanks again. regards Clive B
Thanks again to all respondants. After four hours the handle shaft has been removed, cleaned, polished, greased and replaced. Thin round file cleaned out shaft in the door frame. Shaft not bent just very minor corrosion which being wet made it stick fast. I eventually tapped (thumped!) and when out by 3-4 millimetres brought down again by tightening nut on shaft. After 3 or 4 times up and down it came loose and was extracted by hand. Had to replace one soft brass nut as it was quite deformed by continuous hard tapping. Door handle now functioning as it should. Thanks again for valuable info. regards Clive B
DM has posted this long ago, but is worth repeating. Lube the door jam pivot pins. If the door handle has experienced this amount of corrosion those pins may be in need of lube also.
