I have a 1976 Corvette that I am having door handle issues with. Recently I have been noticing that my driver door has been hard to open from the outside (you would have to pull the handle a few time for it to catch). Well the other day I went to open the door and I heard this: tick, tick clunk, and the handle went limp. I removed the door panel and power window access panel and found a small coil spring and a round piece of metal (I'm assuming these two pieces braking/falling off of the handle were the tick, tick, clunk that I heard). Now hears my question, How do you get to the door handle? My service manual (Clymer) makes to sound so easy to get the door handle off, but I cannot even reach it. Are there any tricks to getting the handle off? Any help with this issue will be greatly appreciated, Thanks, Dan.

 

Not sure if yours is exactly the same as my 81 but when i had to adjust my outside door handles, after removing the door panel i removed the door lock rock from the latch just to have more hand room to get to the back of the latch. On the bottom of the door latch there should be 2 studs with nuts on them that hold the outside door latch on. Remove those to and the handle should lift out of the door. Good luck and keep us updated on what you find out.

 

Thanks for getting back to me. I know that thier is two nuts on the bottom and that you should take the lock off first (thats what my manual said). My issue is how do you get to them? I cannot reach my arm throught my door to reach the nuts. The only access panel that I know of to get to them is through the power window panel. Unless thier is another way of getting to them. Thanks.

 

It's been awhile since I did it but believe I used a 1/4" drive w/ a long extension to reach it. I do remember that it was a real PITA.

 

yeah. Shark has it right here. 1/4" drive and an extension will make it easy to get to. I think you also would be able to get a 3/8" drive in there with an extension as well or even a deep socket might get you what you need.