Driver's door won't open from the outside, but will from the inside

[Venustoise42]

Hey everyone! I was cleaning snow off my explorer the other day, so I opened my driver's door to get the brush out, closed it, and after I had finished, I tried to open the door again with no luck. I checked to make sure that it was unlocked, and used the key, but ensured that it was unlocked by opening every other door on the car. When you pull the handle to attempt to open it, you can hear almost a sliding against what I assume is the door mechanism. For now, I just have to open the door from the inside by going through either the passengers side or the back seat. Any suggestions on how to fix this? Is it better to save the hassle myself and take it to a mechanic to fix? I'm a broke college student currently, so cheaper is better. Thanks in advance!

 

[Scorpion8]

Mechanic will charge you an arm and a leg. I broke one of my outside door handles once when the door froze (thanks Alaska!) but it was obvious as it flopped around. Yours could be broken internally. You'll need to pull the inside door cover off by removing several longish bolts inside the door handles inside the car, and then lifting up while pulling the cover off. Then I hope you have tiny, long, thin girly-man hands to reach inside and see what is no longer connected. I replaced my outside door handle with one from Rock Auto and it works like a champ, but was a pain of convoluted bolt maneuvering back in dark, nefarious places inside the door shell.

Go ahead and pull the inside cover and look around with a flash light back in there and let us know what you find.

 

[Venustoise42]

Mechanic will charge you an arm and a leg. I broke one of my outside door handles once when the door froze (thanks Alaska!) but it was obvious as it flopped around. Yours could be broken internally. You'll need to pull the inside door cover off by removing several longish bolts inside the door handles inside the car, and then lifting up while pulling the cover off. Then I hope you have tiny, long, thin girly-man hands to reach inside and see what is no longer connected. I replaced my outside door handle with one from Rock Auto and it works like a champ, but was a pain of convoluted bolt maneuvering back in dark, nefarious places inside the door shell.

Go ahead and pull the inside cover and look around with a flash light back in there and let us know what you find.

Unfortunately I'm built much more similarly to a linebacker, so it'll be fun trying to find what's wrong. I'm going to be pulling the cover off tomorrow while I don't have work, and will upload pictures depending on what I find/ability to get a camera in there.

Do you know where in the door itself the latch mechanism is located? My suspicion is that it's right next to the handle itself, based on how it feels whenever I forget it's broken and sigh in annoyance when it won't open and I have to go around the car.

 

[Scorpion8]

Do you know where in the door itself the latch mechanism is located?

Hopefully once you got the door cover off it was obvious. Let us know what you found.

 

[Venustoise42]

Unfortunately, I had a family emergency come up that weekend and had to put off the repair for a week. When I finally got the chance to do it, it was a very simple process. We got the door panel off, and realized that the yellow clip in the picture came undone. We snapped it back together, and the door worked perfectly!

 

[Scorpion8]

Good job!