I was exiting my unlocked car by pulling the inner handle, as always, heard a ping, and the handle stuck in the extended position without opening the door. Ugghhhhhh!

If I push the handle back to its "resting" position, I encounter a stop at about half-way. If I push it down harder, it snaps back into place. The handle seems to be operating the lock mechanism (the sliding sound you hear when you open a locked door from the inside) -- just not the door latch. The exterior door handle works fine.

Anything I can check? I used to do extensive work on my '86 240 -- not the same by any means but I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty! :-D

Please help if you can -- I'm paying for a wedding and can't afford an expensive repair!

 

Here's what I've found so far (for others with the same issue):

Taking it in to the shop will likely result in about $450 worth of parts -- the handle is integrated into the door panel (lol wat?)
Thread with vadis screenshot: http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/for...handle+#p87835

I'm going to pop open the panel and see if I can't reattach the pull cable to the handle. Panel removal: http://forums.swedespeed.com/zerothread?id=80796

 

This happened to me just now, can someone tell me how to fix?

 

Super easy to fix dude. Mine did this when I first got it.
Take off the interior door panel and you will see the rod just popped off the latch.
Fish for it and re connect it

 

It will keep popping out. You need to drill a few small holes in the plastic holder and attach it with some stainless wire. Did this a few years back and still works fine.

 

We took the door panel off. I agree with the above poster. In my case one of the 4 "prongs" that hold the mechanism seated properly is cracked, the one at the bottom. The lip is about to break off completely. We are going to epoxy it right now and are considering epoxying some metal onto it to reinforce.

Can I order the big black piece from Volvo to re attach or what?

Any other suggestions?

 

Seems to be a common ailment...I think mine was when the PO tried to open from the inside with the childproof gizmo enabled. Opens fine from outside, but not inside. Any tricks to pulling the door panel off and reinstalling it?

Jim

 

For now we are going to get some real plastic glue (not just simple epoxy) from the car store and glue it back together and we are going to glue a plastic piece on the bottom to try to reinforce the lip thing. If that doesn't work then we will go with the idea of drilling holes to wire the door handle mechanism in.

I just spoke to Volvo. To simply diagnose the problem (they are allowed to charge) it is an hour of labor at a cost of $116. Then to correct the problem they estimate (are allowed to charge) another hour of labor at $116. That's $232 and doesn't include the cost of whatever part I need to fix it.

HA! At this point, I figure, if we destroy the part in the process of trying to fix, it at least the repair cost will be money well spent.

And, of course, they gave me a little **** for taking the door panel off myself, lol. Whatever!

 

Jim, there are two links above, in the second post. We used that information to do it. The SwedeSpeed link has good tips and pics.

 

Thanks...will go back up and review those again. I'm a noob on this site, but a long time Volvo driver. Have not done much of my own work since the early 80s but am tired of forking over big $ to correct minor things like this.

Perhaps it is time to invest in a repair manual, at least an on-line version.

Jim

 

Exactly where did you drill these holes?

 

okaywell.... the plastic epoxy glue laster all of one day....
anyone have any ideas or know where that poster drilled those holes?

thanks!

 

It's hard to explain without a picture, but what I did was drill 2 .032" holes in the plastic holder and wrap stainless lockwire to hold the cable in place. Hope this helps.

 

We drilled holes last week and wired the mechanism in, like the previous poster suggested and everything seems to work just fine.

We did take pictures but haven't had time to post them. Due to the ridiculous cost of getting this issue fixed by the repair shop (at least $600 by my estimation) feel free to email me and ask for the pictures if I havent had a chance to post them and you need the fix.

s a s p r o u l at gmail dot com

Happy Driving

 

One other thing I realized as I was calling around to pick a part to see if I could just purchase a new interior, the interior doors are the same for the s60 and s40 models over a wide span of the years. This fix will probably work on all of those.