How To Replace an Exterior Door Handle on a 1999 Toyota Corolla

About six months ago while I was in Statics class at Piedmont Tech, some punk tried to break into my car by forcing the door handle open. They were unsuccessful, but they broke the plastic lever of the door handle off and I've been forced to use two hands to pry open my door every time I entered my car since then. That was especially annoying when I was carrying something and it was raining.




I bought a replacement handle online for about $30-$40.

My Corolla is a 1999 model with electric windows, but I imagine the overall process is similar for similar models.

I don't have any auto body experience, but I figured I'd give it a shot and save what would probably be a lot of money and a lot of wasted time spent waiting on a shop to repair it. You could probably rearrange some of these steps, but this is how I did it in about two hours:

I have no idea what the technical names are for some of these parts, so bear with me.

...

Pop off the little arm rest with something like a flat head screwdriver. It pops on and off, so there's nothing more complicated than that.



Remove the two screws shown in this picture







Remove the interior door handle by unscrewing the one screw holding the handle to the door:



Once the interior door handle is loose, you'll have to separate it from the metal arm that connects to the door opening mechanism.






Go all the way around the door panel with a flat head screwdriver and pop it off. You'll see a dozen or so clips that hold the door panel to the door as shown here.




Lift the door panel up and over the interior door lock.






Disconnect the wiring group that controls the windows. They were all running to the same connection on my door. I had to gently force the connection apart.




Peel back some or all of the interior plastic, and you'll have access to the inside of the exterior door handle.




There are three bolts and an arm that have to be removed as shown in this picture


Surprise, surprise, I found out Toyota used metric hardware, and these bolts were 10mm. Luckily, I have a metric socket set. This step took the longest as there was not much room in there to maneuver.




Here's the end of the arm that must be gently forced out. You can see the little corona at the tip that holds it in place. I got a bloody knuckle removing this, but it was worth it.




Slide the old door handle out and reverse the process with the new handle and you're done!






Special thanks to Melissa for being a big help with this project!

| Posted in » CAR VANDAL, do-it-yourself, DOOR HANDLE, DOOR PANEL, Most Popular Posts, PIEDMONT TECHNICAL COLLEGE, THIEF, TOYOTA COROLLA