The left front outside door handle on my '97 Limited has a broken spring that causes the handle to flop without tension when lifting. Ford parts tells me that the spring is NOT available separately, and that the handle is $145.00 (Canadian)
Does anyone know any differently? Is there a spring that I can buy somewhere that will be a suitable replacement?
Thanks
Small parts such as the spring on your door handle are not serviced separately..... it is more convenient and more cost effective to sell sub-assemblies especially when it involves parts that are rivetted, spot welded or contain other pieces that may be subject to bouts of consumer frustration. Could you imagine the logistics and cataloging nightmare if each and every washer and spring of each and every subassembly had to be listed?
DIYers make up a very, very small portion of the parts sales base. The door rate for our shop is 78 marsh birds per hour. I'm relatively sure that most folks would rather bite the bullet and pay me a half hour to change the handle than pay me three hours to perform some balancing act and hope that this patched up handle will last until they flog the car.
You might find something that will work somewhere if you look hard enough and long enough.... personally, my time is much too valuable to be spent scouring the planet for something like this. YMMV
HTH
-- Jim Warman snipped-for-privacy@telusplanet.net
As Jim says, the spring is not available separately.
And further, if it is the typical Explorer / Ranger handle failure, it is the casting that the spring catches on, and NOT the spring that is broken anyway.
I've often wondered, as common as this failure is why the "Help" parts company hasn't come up with some type of pop-in helper spring for these..
At any rate, I don't know if your dealer is a crook, or if the parts are really that bad there, but you can buy one in the states for around $40.00 from the dealer.
Other than being annoying, it doesn't hurt anything though. you can just leave it alone unless it really bugs you!
I don't know, but a local body shop removed the door panel and said that the spring was broken. That's all I know.
Nope, Ford parts manager said that the handle assy. was (approx) $145.00, but would sell to me for trade price; $122.00. Now that's really "biting the bullet" !
I will leave it alone until it fails completely.
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