So for the last few months my passenger door will not open from the inside or outside, before that it would not open from the inside. Now my drivers door is having a hard time opening from the inside??? Is this a common problem the truck is in fairly good shape and the 88 parts truck I just scrapped had the same problem.

 

Not a common problem at least for Me !!

Do you lube things at your oil changes.

Hinges Door linkage any parts that move .

 

I take very good care of the truck, the passenger door always opened perfectly from the outside if you played with the inside handle it would work sometimes but now the lock is broken and nothing works. The drivers door works perfect outside but it is almost like the inside handle does not have enough throw. I have a nice set of vent window doors that I have been waiting to put on hence the reason I havent fixed the passenger door.

 

You know I had this same issue with my passenger door in my 88 pickup. The inside handle didnt have enough throw to fully release unless you really pulled on it and also kinda put your shoulder into the door. I fixed this by bending the steel arm inside the door that goes from your handle to the door lock area. Kind of tightened up the throw and all is good now. I was always able to easily open it from the outside. No issue with my driver door yet.

 

I have seen the inside door handle not work on several trucks and am surprised it does not come up often on these threads. I use a zip tie to hold the rod in the valley that the rod rides and lay in. Where the zip tie is, you can see some indentions on the door where the factory used a foam pad to help hold the rod into place. The zip tie may look like a poor fix but I think it is actually an improved fix. I have heard some bending the rod to make it work.

With the door panel off, the door closed, pull the handle and you will see it come out of the valley the rod lays in. The foam is what held in it place. The foam may still be there, but the rod has sawed its way thru the foam. When you pull the handle, you will see the rod come out of the valley and that little bit of movement is what keeps the latch from opening from the inside.

The zip tie will keep it in the valley, removing that extra slack and door will operate great. As far as the outside handle, you need to see if the plastic clip that holds the door rod to the exterior handle is not broken or just worn out. You can get them from Toyota for a few dollars a piece. They are side specific and are not interchangeable with each other.

My fix for the door and I really don't feel that it is a poor fix compared to how Toyota did it. You may come up with something similar or better but this works great for me.


On my 85 truck build link below, I have some information somewhere on the door handle with in the first 27 pages if you want to look that up. It will be later before I could find that information.

 

mbomberz1 you hit the nail on the head. I also can not believe that I couldn't find this under a search. So I took apart my doors (30 degrees outside awesome) and after playing around for a while I realized that the door handle didnt have nearly enough throw, there is a rectangular opening right where terrys87 hand is in the above picture, in that opening that rod is supposed to be bent into almost a v shape after years of pulling the handle that bar becomes straight and the handle does nothing. After fixing both my doors I took apart several other doors I had just to see and all were the same except for the doors that only have about 10k on them. The almost new doors never had the door panels off and the rod has a drastic bend in it, I think the tie wrap will help but eventually they just get stretched out. There is no way that most of these trucks dont have this problem, I highly recommend that if your door opens only when you pull hard on the handle that you pop the door panel off and bend that rod. Oh yeah don't pull the top of the panel out of the window just hold it up in the air they don't like to go back together after almost 30 years

 

That zip tie works great, didn’t have to bend mine at all- so stoked- I was getting frustrated and could not figure it out I thought I was pulling hard from inside my cab with pliers, but doing that zip tie trick keeping it in place was it, door opens from inside and out now. Can’t thank ya enough!!!!