2012 Corolla - Driver Door Difficult to Open

Jeremy-Wilcox-Wilcox
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 16:01:50 +0000
Maintenance/Repairs

Hi everyone,

I’ve got a 2012 Corolla with a door/handle problem. If I’m inside the car and I pull on the door handle, it’ll get 80% of the way there and stop. I can pull as hard as I want to and it won’t open. I try 4-5 times, and then all of a sudden it’ll release like it was getting caught on something. On the outside, I’ll pull the handle 1-2 times and it’ll open. It doesn’t give me any restistance, it just doesn’t open until repeated attempts. This morning, it escalated from 1-2 pulls to “I won’t open at all from the outside.” I had to crawl through the passenger side, pull the inside handle 4-5 times, get it unlatched and go back around to get in the car. Not a sustainable option!

I’d replaced the door lock actuator about 18 months ago - and I’ve replaced each element of the equation on other cars I own (interior and exterior door handle) so I feel like this is probably in my grasp to repair on my own, but I wasn’t sure which part might really be the problem.

Any ideas? This setup is obviously not sustainable for very long. Thanks!

14 posts - 9 participants