[DeTomaso] Passenger door handle question

Charles McCall charlesmccall at gmail.com
Mon Jun 20 15:54:07 EDT 2011


It's a Pantera-specific part.   People bust their door handles all the 
time, because they tug the door open using the pull-tab on the handle.
****Mike, you yelled at me for doing so, but how often does this really
happen for using the pull tab as a handle? 

One friend in the UK has broken his door handle THREE times, because he 
keeps forgetting that he locked his car!   He tries to open the door, it
won't 
open, so he just pulls harder until the doorhandle comes off in his 
hand--DOH!
***That's kind of my point. I have photos of the door of our mutual friend,
who shall remain nameless, when he showed up to the Spa trip with no
doorhandles on one side of his red, British registered 1972 GT5-conversion
after trying to open the door AGAIN with the door locked ;-) 

The technique Gary Hall showed me when I bought my Pantera from him in 
1989, is to treat the pull tab as a LATCH only.   A gentle pull releases the

latch and the door pops open an inch or so, then curl your fingers around
the 
sheetmetal skin of the door and use that to open the door.
****Gary Hall's technique is obviously gentler on the opening mechanism, but
that doesn't necessarily mean that the contrary is rough enough to cause
failure. It's not a common failure, I don't think, or at least there hasn't
been a lot of noise about them over the years




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