I took some golf lessons one time, and the best advice the pro gave me after watching a few of my attempts at swinging the club was: "George, golf indeed has a lot of rules, but you still ARE allowed to AIM! . That’s right, I was neglecting to take the time to aim.
This same sort of thing can happen in diy’ er car repair. I have to remind myself esp when working inside of doors that I’m actually allowed to put the lock in a different position, or move the window up or down, etc. And that what I’m attempting must be possible b/c it was necessary in order to build the car in the first place.
As far as the metal rods inserted in plastic clips, that configuration is pretty much guaranteed to break some of the clips. This is the reason plumbers never thread metal pipe into plastic fittings. When joining plastic to metal, they always thread the plastic pipe into a metal fitting. Since the diy’er doesn’t get an opinion on the door’s configuration, just have to accept that replacing some of the plastic clips with new ones is part of the job.