The bastard in turn here is a 2001 Prizm, for now my wife's current car. That will change next year.

Her door handles on 3 doors broke. After dealing with one door and trying another, I tried the rear drivers side door outside handle. Got everything apart, put it all back together, TESTED them and while it was a little sticky it shut and worked as should. Now after shutting the door it will not open from either the inside or out. It acts as though it is locked, but the damn locking lever is pulled up as high as i can get it. I'm about to blow this POS up. Any ideas what to do??

 

burn it with FIRE!!!!

 

Trust me.. I'm about to.

 

Just cut the doors off, they're over rated!

 

Crush it with your XJ

 

take the door panel off and double check all the linkage bars. chances are one of the plastic clips at the latch end came off/broke.

keep in mind, the prism is nothing more than a rebranded corolla. gotta think japanese.

 

Yep, and Toyota is infamous for horrible doors. All my moms side of the family has ever owned. They've all run forever but the doors have gone to **** over and over on every single one of them.

My mom's got a 99 Camry with 100k on it. Runs like new, still drives great, you'd never know it has 100k on it without looking at the odometer, but the doors suck. In the last year I've had to replace the window motors and regulators and all 8 interior and exterior handles. In the last month the passenger door broke again and now it doesn't open at all.

Between her and my aunt they've had a few pickups, 4 camries, a bunch of tercels, and a couple corolas. Doors have gone to **** on all of em. Even the new Camry recently had a recall from where the doors were catching on fire inside.

 

done this many time before. take the panel off and make sure all the connecting rods arn't crossing each other or binding with something. could have one twisted around another or have it not all the way in place and is catching. when i had this problem, at first the handle would stay open and you could shut the door and it would swing right back open, the passenger side was staying closed but would not open. both had the rods binding with others.

 

hopefully the glass is all the way up, place two wedges between the glass and the outer door panel. Place them in just far enough that you can see the door latch assembly, using a door unlocking tool or a strong wire coat hanger, pull up on the small lever near the bottom of the latch to pop the latch open...then you can take the panel off and see what went wrong