New question on 85 Cabriolet door locks and such

If you are sure that this is the problem I know a trick that might save you a few bucks. Brand new Cabby door handles are very expensive (I think that I saw them for $69 at motorworks.com). the only difference between these and the cheaper rabbit handles is the fingers. Depending on were you are located you can probably find a cabby in a junk yard. Any door handle from either a rabbit convertible or Cabby will work. The problem that you run into with these is that: 1) its hard to find one that looks mint 2) Most don't come with keys. Now here's the trick. You can take the fingers off the Cabby handle you get and put it on the handles that you have. You only have to remove one screw.

The reason that I know that the rabbit handles are so cheap is because I bought 2 for the $7 each and swapped out my finger onto them. I had to do about 15 minutes of additional work on one because the crappy rivet job at one of the pivot point caused the fingers to rub on one of the door opening mechanisms. But all I did to fix it was to crush the rivet head a little more with a pair of vise grips and a little filling to get some additional clearance. Also while you have the fingers off the lock mechanism can easily be swapped between handles if you need to for any reason.

One final thought, I never priced just the finger part at a dealer there is a part # for just this piece but after checking prices on some other little parts at VW I figure the price for these would be astronomical but I might be wrong and you might get lucky.

HTH Steve

Take one of your handles with you and compare the two it's easy to see the difference. A yard by me wanted $20 a handle That's why I went with the cheapo rabbit ones. Might help to get online and get a copy of the price for the cheapo new ones to drive his used price down. Most yards don't know the difference. Can't hurt.

HTH Steve