How To Make an Interior Hatch Handle

I think think an actual door handle would be sweet. Might have to look into doing this. Using a Heep ext handle might do the trick. Time for some research.

KJL said:

I think think an actual door handle would be sweet. Might have to look into doing this. Using a Heep ext handle might do the trick. Time for some research.

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An exterior handle would only work if it was mounted sideways. An interior handle could, but for either one, you would need to figure out how to solidly mount it, it would need some structure behind the plastic trim panel.

Forgot about this... ive got a 93 sport now so I think this will be my project tonight after work..

Forgot to ask, how hard is it to unlatch from the inside? Id hate to have to curl into a little ball and have to kick at the bolt to get it to unlatch but im sure my wife would get a kick out of it lol

Not difficult, it takes some effort but that might just be because my latches seem to bind a bit, and I've always had trouble with them...so much so that my exterior handle snapped. I've been using the interior handle as the only way to open the hatch for a couple of years now haha. From outside I reach in with my left hand to open it and it's not that difficult.

Just found out about the no-inside-latch problem yesterday and am planning on doing something about it, although not sure how yet. I like the ingenuity of this approach but like a couple other posters would like to see if I could either find an inside handle from another vehicle that could be made to work as though it were stock, or possibly the remote trunk release which would probably not be all that hard to do.

Has anyone else done this yet?

Tankentaisha said:

Has anyone else done this yet?

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Yep, just finished it a while ago. Did it pretty much as OP described it. Pretty simple. Was about $10 in parts from Home Depot and I slipped a few bucks to a guy at a local welding shop to put the standoff on. The hardest part was getting the back trim panel off. The retrofit is really simple assembly. I did get stuck in the back once as I did not Dremel the cutout far enough to allow the latch mechanism to slide far enough to unlock. Had to climb over the seats to get out. But I am pretty happy with it. Took about an hour to complete. I plan to start sleeping the in Ex on camping trips and can now exit the rear without having to leave the hatch ajar or the rear glass up.
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I'm now planning on wiring a momentary switch parallel with the upper hatch switch on the outside, but reading your post has me also considering doing the mechanical latch as well.

Really like the comfort of sleeping in the back of these compared to anything smaller or using the seats. A nap of 10 minutes laying comfortably is worth more than an hour of twisting around in a seat with your eyes closed.