****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
Liked the door handles they are thick, solid, nice powder coating job, and came with the gasket. Like others have said if you are ordering one handle the placement is reversed. You would expect the right handle to be passenger, but it is drivers side. Is fine as long as you know.My install, and a few things that I did to make my life easier. First I took the door completely off so I could lay it flat so I could see up inside of there which helped. Once you have the door covering , handle, and window handle off roll the plastic and tuck it in the window channel. Take a longer flat screwdriver bend up on the spring clip, and wiggle n pull the flat piece of steel with the teeth on it. I think I used a pair of needle nose to get a better grip on it. Will need to pull out 2 of those, and a small cotter pin. Then that handle is out of the door. Simple as that.Now the fun part. What i did to slightly change the procedure because my hands would not go into Jeep doors that easy. Take the new handle, and take off the spring clip, and reinstall 180 degrees from where it started. That way you can drive the steel pieces in from the bottom. No way to drive them in from the top. Another thing, The steel pieces that you removed, take a file and chamfer the bottom front leading edge. I put a small angle on it so it would get on top of the steel on the other side of the handle opening. It is slightly rounded now, but a small 45 degree "ramp" will help a lot. Just about an 1/8th of an inch will do.Those steel pieces will need at least the spring to set on the second tooth when you put them back in. If you only go to the first click you will have a slightly gappy door handle at the top. To get the steel to the second tooth takes a hammer, and either that long screwdriver or something like it.Will take a couple of good hits. Don't forget the cotter pin in the handle release.The movement mechanism is slightly bigger with these replacement door handles, and heavier duty than stock. Which is good, but brings another challenge. The outer handle, and the inner handle are linked directly together so the top horizontal rod needs moved about 1/8" to 3/16". If you look at the inner handle it will be sticking up a little, pop the rod out and move it so the inner handle lays flat. Snap it back in, and try the outer handle. It should move with the outer handle and then lay flat again when the outer is released.This one was a hard one. I had the doors all put back together and looking good. locked the lock, and closed the door. THEN could not get either handle to work. Could not unlock the door. Tried for an hour. Wound up taking the door panel off with the door locked closed, and examining the mechanism. The lowest vertical rod is responsible for the door lock. It needed to be popped out of its clip , and moved the same 1/8th inch. Now both doors function flawlessly.If you replace the handles do yourself a favor, and check to be sure everything is functioning correctly before reinstalling the doors. Not a real hard job, but not the 3 minutes that I have read about.
