Why is my Audi 5000 Passengers front door handle so hard toopen?

[Brett Dikeman]

At 11:50 AM -0500 12/12/00, Huw Powell wrote:
>Brett Dikeman wrote:
>>
>>  I spent about an hour or two removing the door handles once and found
>>  they could be -completely- disassembled.
>
>Brett, don't you have a 200?  with the flush door handles?  (which *can*
>be disassembled)

Do now, but in high school, I drove the family 5000.  Did the repairs 
on that car.

>Car in question has the good old trigger release handles which are
>riveted in a few key places.

Hmm.  If I recall, there was only one rivet...and it wasn't really a 
rivet.  It was sort of a metal bar, hollow center, with a slit.  It 
took a few taps with a mallet and a small enough implement, and it 
came out.  I think that let the lever out of the handle.  Then there 
was a screw or two that attached the remaining pieces to the handle 
shell.  I think.  It's been at least 4 years since I did it :-)

Maybe some years have rivets, some don't?  If I'm bored tonight I'll 
see if maybe I posted on my little procedure and it's still in the 
archives.


>   And which a good cleaning and lubing out
>of the car might save...

Always a good point, keeping things up and up will make things easier 
on the latch breakage-wise; the biggest improvement was from the lube 
job on the door; the handle overhaul just made things a little bit 
smoother/easier on top of the improvements.  I think the initial 
resistance is from tension in the "grabber" part of the latch.

I also tired of the lock cylinder(s) freezing and being in general 
hard to operate, so I pulled those apart as well(very easy, if I 
recall; just don't mix up the little tumblers, though that's not a 
death-of-the-world type deal; inserting the key will clearly show 
which ones are wrong.)  But hey, now I've got heated lock 
cylinders(which are worth their weight in gold in amusement purposes 
after the first snow each year :-)

I've noticed things starting to get stiff in the 200; doors creaking, 
handles getting stiffer, and the like.  Time for a little quality 
time with the door innards, I guess.  That should be fun, with the 
lock heater jacket, alarm wiring, and all that crap in there just 
getting in the way.

B
-- 
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Brett Dikeman				Systems Engineer
ProAct Technologies Corporation		914-872-8043
(formerly CFN[formerly iClick, Inc])		914-872-8100(fax)
120 Bloomingdale Rd.			http://www.proacttechnologies.com
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