Hey guys,

I couldn't find anyone ever posting anything like this before, so here is my solution to our stupid exterior door handles. I know everyone buys aluminum handles, but in reality, it isn't the plastic that's the problem, it is the design of the mechanism, and that is what I have addressed here.

The reason our door handles break is that as the pivot points in the mechanism wear and develop some play, it ruins the leverage of the handle, forcing you to pull much too hard to open it. This makes us mad, and we turn into the Hulk and rip the handle off. Buying a new assembly from Mazda solves the problem, but it is only temporary and is prohibitively expensive.

Here is my solution with step by step pictures. Total cost is about a quarter if you own a tap and die set, or $5 if you have to buy a drill bit and tap. (or free if you use a welder)

Step One:
Remove the exterior door handle assembly. This takes less than 5 minutes, if you don't know how consult the FSM. Be careful with the door lock actuator, they break very easily.

What you take out will look something like this:


Notice how the force you apply is almost directly towards the pivot point of the actuator. This is because the wear in all the parts of the handle allows the actuator rod to travel too far counterclockwise past where it should rest. See red line to illustrate the force you are applying.

Notice how much play there is in the handle pivot between pulling everything tight or letting it loose:




Here is the leverage on the pivot if you eliminate all the play in the handle and linkage:


This is where the lever would rest on a new handle. See how much more of the force you apply to the handle is actually opening the door instead of just binding the handle?

Step Two:

Now that we have the handle out and can see the problem, the solution is obvious: create a stop on the linkage to keep it from traveling too far back. It is a little hard to see, but I have made a dot with a sharpie and center punch on the actuator lever to show where a stop can be installed:



You will need to figure out the proper location to put your stop that will remove all play from your handle and allow it to actuate easily, but not limit the travel too much.

Step Three:

Remove the phillips screw at the pivot of the actuator lever. Be careful not to lose the spring when it comes apart. This is just to take off spring pressure so you can work. Alternatively you can use some vice grips or something to clamp the lever open so you don;t have to take anything apart.

Step Four:

There are a few different ways to stop the lever here. The easiest for me is just to put a dot of weld here. Most people don't have a welder, so here is another easy method:
Buy a small socket head cap screw. Get the shortest one you can. Here I used a #6-32 x 1/4" screw, but it doesn't matter what size. If you have a tap and die set, make sure to pick a size for which you own a tap.

Drill and tap the location which you marked in step two. Make sure to include the diameter of the screw head in your figuring when locating the center of the hole. If you use a #6-32 screw, the proper drill size is 7/64.

If the screw you are using is longer than 1/4" or even 1/8", you will want to cut it shorter. It only needs to be long enough to thread through the lever arm. Here is where mine ended up:



Thread the screw into the tapped hole and tighten it up. Replace the phillips screw in the lever if you took it apart.

It should look something like this: (note the much improved leverage)



Step Five:
Drink a few sips of your beer of choice, and play with your now easy to actuate door handle. Actually, considering the 100s of dollars in replacement door handle parts you just saved, you may want to give your keys to a responsible person and just drink a whole six pack.

It is a good time to lubricate all parts of the handle mechanism before you put it together. I use graphite chain and cable lubricant, but whatever you want to use is fine just don't make a big mess.

Hope this helps some people out!

 

Great info here.

Thanks!

 

Awesome! Ill give this a shot. Hopefully I wont need to buy aluminum handles after all...

 

Good info, my driver side handle is getting stiff at times, definitely going to try this.

 

Excellent job! Thanks for sharing this with us!

I have found that a lot of the problem with door handles over time is lack of lubrication. Really helps to shoot some white lithium grease in the handle about once a year to keep it from sticking. You can even do that without removing the door handle, just pop the black cover off the back. There's a small access hole that you can get one of the red tubes on a spray can of white lithium grease in.

Again, great job!

Dale

 

awesome! I'm still getting my aluminum handles but doing this as well!

 

patman,

Recently my door handle was failing due to so much mechanical play, and I wasn't sure about how to reduce the amount of wasted movement, or if attempts to reduce play would endure over the long run. So I purchased a new door handle. However, I've saved this good information and will consider performing preventative maintenance for the future.

Gracias!

 

juicyjosh,

If you don't mind telling, how much did Mazda set you back for a new handle assembly?

 

patman,

I didn't want to mention it in my first post, but since you asked....

I got it for $200 + $10 shipping from Ray. (yes, ouchie!)

And although Ray usually has discounted prices - and I will say that he has helped me out on dozens of Mazda parts - I also found it for $100 + shipping here: http://www.rhdjapan.com/mazda-oem-le...dle-fd3s-28199.

Either way, it's a lot of money for a plastic housing and a poorly-designed hinge mechanism.

Come to think of it, patman, I think your solution is just plain damaging to the economy.

 

A number of people have also had success with these guys although it is certainly pricier it seems: http://www.rx7doorhandles.com/

 

I just purchased a new set so I know the ouchie feeling. I am selling my old set (pending mod approval) for half the price of new hint-hint!!!!

 

The best way to keep them from getting stiff is to keep people out of your car lol. My 1994 handles feel like new. I make women climb in and out through the sunroof. In NC we do it NASCAR style!

 

That is some good information.

On his subject, my driver's side door handle broke and I have not been able to find any threads using the search tool about how to replace my broken door handle.

I dont know who the FSM is, so would you be able to tell me how to remove the door handle please?

 

Shot my handle linkage down with silicone lubricant and works like a charm too

 

I've seen posts recommending them, but they only sell the handle itself. In my case the original '93 handle was still intact; it was the pieces that it interacted with inside the assembly that were all tweaked loose. So when I would pull on the door handle, the internals would move in directions other than their intended plane, and therefore they would not move the lever bar up enough to pull the door latch.

Each door handle hinge is like what you'd find on a pair of cheap scissors that is loose at its hinge; when you try to squeeze it against resistance, the blade/arm sweeps along a slightly-off sector. I wanted to eliminate the play in the joined arms, but at the time wasn't able to come up with a solid guaranteed reliable fix.

I'm going to have to look at the assembly again. It looked like all the hinges were bolts with mushroomed bottoms (like the crushed-end ones on a pair of cheap scissors) that somehow needed to be re-crushed-ended (?). But even then, the metal fatigue of the bolts being worked loose, then re-crushed, I felt would be a weakened link and temporary fix at best.

Eventually I just reasoned that anything that lasts 18 years on an RX-7 (or any car) isn't bad. I just wish parts were cheaper.

 

Like mentioned lubrication is your best bet to metal to metal wear. It is a silly design, however the door exteriors do look sick with no nasty door handle on the actual sheet metal. It is a give take when it comes to the all around bad-assness of these cars.

Great write-up to this problem. If mine needs lube more than once a year I will be doing this MOD!

 

Just adding to the data pile here...

I added silicon grease to my handles and they feel brand new. Though I can say I never even checked if they were loading strangely as mentioned in this thread.

I wonder if the lubrication wears out causing excessive force to be applied when opening the door, and that excessive force then gets pushed in a stupid direction instead of towards opening the doors? (as noted in this thread) Which in turn causes the plastic to break? IOW, its a bad design, but its masked so long as the lube is in good shape. Once the lube is old/missing the bad design gets amplified to the point of breaking the handle.

 

Yeah, so long as they have lube the design is sufficient, but who the hell opens their door up to lube the inside? When the links start binding the force increases, wear accelerates, plastic handle breaks, and the whole things self destructs. You'll notice this same problem with alot of the hinged interior items in the FD (map lid is another example). Mazda took lots of short cuts with the FD, most likely because they did so much r/d on the chassis and the rest of the car that come time to build it they didn't have much budget left over to make everything to the highest standard. They kinda made due with what they had, which translated into short life on parts, or sub par operation in some areas. Keep in mind they also had weight constraints imposed by the head engineers... so it had to work, be light, and be relatively cheap within reason.

The actual mechanism works fine if A) Lubed, B) not worn from lack of lubrication C) The plastic handle itself hasn't become brittle over time, or fatigued from lack of lube.

We have some exterior cast aluminum handles to replace the stock ones --> https://www.rx7club.com/group-buy-product-dev-fd-rx-7-269/gb-interest-exterior-aluminum-door-handles-sakebomb-garage-978512/ but without lubrication it only moves the wear down the chain one step... but it's one piece of the puzzle to a functional/lasting design... the added leverage in this thread may be one of the other pieces to cure the failing handle problems but it may just move the stress to the stamped hinges

I've been working on an additional fix which would replace the two stamped hinge sections with special bolts to take up the slack. i.e. drill out those stamped sections and replace with a bolt/washer/nut assembly, but getting the tension just right is a little tricky.

-Heath

 

I agree on the lube but sometimes a fix is needed depending on heavy usage. Lube made my hardly used passenger door handle work like new however, it did nothing for my heavily used drivers. I'm gonna give this a shot. After playing with my handles so much over time, I'm suprised I didn't figure this little fix myself. LOL!

 

You can see the operation below. What really needs to happen is these joints need to be replaced with a bolt/washer/nut type setup with a thin wavy washer or similar between the moving parts for constant pressure throughout the rotation. I've been working on something for it recently but it looks like I may need custom machined pieces to replace the crimp pivot the way I wanted to (maybe someone has a better method). The suggested screw fix helps bring everything into line, but to really fix the problem, you have to remove the slop from the two pivot joints. You can see the pivot flex/wobble left/right out of plane in the second video. This handle isn't too bad... looks like the previous owner at least lubed it up once, but I've seen much worse than this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVS3Rwz3bMM


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Pb5cAFf_M

 

I can't understand what you did or what you're talking about.

 

I like everything I'm seeing here.

As far as wear on the linkage, it's important for it to be lubricated and to avoid excessive force. After operating it without lubrication for a while it will wear and this increases the forces greatly. This trick certainly should work well to keep a worn linkage working, and lubrication helps prevent it from coming back.

For a new door handle, lubrication is absolutely necessary but a trick like this will help make the new handle last longer. The only risk I can think of it more chance of accidentally opening the door but I can't imagine a situation where that would happen.

 

I agree with Dale. This is a GREAT write up and will likely help a lot of FD owners. Fortunately, I have had wonderful luck simply lubing mine up every other year or so. My car DOES stay in a climate-controlled garage all year round and never sits out in the elements, so I imagine that has to help, and I can imagine cars that DO sit outside would have more problems. I agree, one should not HAVE to ever lube these things, my 18 year old Suburban I recently traded off never had any such thing required in its 187,000 miles over all those years.

 

Does your surburban have plastic door handles?

Once upon a time... I had to replace a 90's Camry's door handle for a customer. It turns out it too was plastic and the plastic had broken as well. The cheapest / easiest fix in my mind at the time was to go to the local Pull-A-Part and grab a door handle. After all, its a Camry, there should be TONS of them there. There were tons of them there, but all the door handles were either taken, OR broken in the same manner. I had the customer buy a new handle. I noticed the other handles were hard to pull. I ended up lubing them thinking there was just too much force on the chinsey plastic handles. They all felt new again, similar to our FDs after a lube.

So...maybe its a plastic handle thing, or maybe its a 90's Japanese car thing?

 

I'm talking about/working on drilling out those crimped links (2 of them) and replacing with a bolt/washer/flat nut assembly. If you look at the first video you can see the entire assembly "shift" or track out of plane. This handle is still in relatively good shape but over time this play becomes more severe and everything else starts to break.

So the fix (as I see it) is:

1. Replace plastic handle portion with a metal one (we carry a direct copy in aluminum/powdercoated, and another vendor makes a similar handle as well)
2. Replace the worn crimped-linkages with appropriate bolts/nuts, tighten to correct spec, and locktight
3. possibly add the suggested screw in this thread as a guide to keep everything honest



Parts 1 and 3 are good to go... part two is the missing link (no pun intended )
-Heath