Honda Car Forum

I recently got home from work and the driver door would not open on my
1998 Honda Civic LX. Neither the inside handle nor the outside would
work. I spent a while reading on google groups and looking around
online but didnt find much. I finally got it open, so I thought I
would post my findings, and how to go about fixing it (I saw a post
about a 1990 Honda Accord in this forum with a simular problem, they
used a different solution).

I posted to a couple other forums and they said that the rods were off,
however that was not the case. In many cases, i would imagine that the
rods would be the answer, but apparently not always.

Since i was able to find so very little on this problem, I figured I
would write this up and post it so others might get the answers I
couldnt find. Some of the things I found online were people talking
about drilling out the locking mechanism, using a torch to cut off the
back of the D ring which the door latches to, and cutting open the door
to get to the latch (followed by bodywork and painting). These all
seemed a little overly distructive to me, and after some playing I came
up with another solution.

So how did i fix it:

1) Pull off the interior door panel. This is hard because the door is
closed. The way I did it was to take off the handle (interior) and
take out the screws in the arm rest and down at the speaker, then start
at the back top and pull it off the top of the door at the window.
This takes some effort, but it will pop off. Then pull the lock rod
out of the hole in the panel. You can pop off all the presure fittings
except the one behind the dashboard. You'll need something like a
prybar to stick back there and work that, but you can get it off...with
enough tugging and working it.

2) Once the door panel is off, undo the bolt that holds the window
track (note: the window must be up). Next, undo the screws that hold
the power lock mechanism on and the black plastic part that shields
part of the mechanism. Now you should just have the latch mechanism
left, which has a metal plate on it with the backs of 2 screws at the
top and one at the bottom.

3) Take a dremmel tool and cut the metal plate just below the two
screws (i did it right at the ridge). Also grind off the heads of the
two rivets which hold that plate on as well. On my particular one they
were in the middle of the plate. Once you have done that, you can work
a screw driver/needle nose plyers in there and pull the plate back a
bit. Next use some vice grips (or something) to pull off that whole
plate down to the bottom screw. I just fatigued it off at that point.
At this point you should be able to see the metal lever and spring for
the latch release (top) and see the lever for the lock mechanism
(bottom).

4) Take a screw driver or something and pop out the lower lock lever
(dont forget to unhook the rod to the outside keylock mechanism). This
takes some force, but it will pop out. The latch release is located on
the outside behind that lock lever. Once you have that popped off, you
can just push the latch release down with your finger and open the
door.

5) Get a new latch mechanism and install it. This is fairly easy once
the door is open.

6) Put the door back together.

I found that once i had that release accessible, i was able to
close/open the door without a problem from the inside (not using the
handles of course, since the whole latch mechanism was basically
destroyed at this point.)

I hope this helps someone out there.