How To Replace Front Exterior Door Handle 1998-2011 Lincoln Town Car

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Hi, I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing or maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20-plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly: that's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video.

In this video we're going to show you how to remove and replace the outside driver's door handle on this 2000 Lincoln Town Car, pretty much the same as the other side, also, the same as most of this generation Town Car. Tools you'll need are a Phillips screwdriver, a flat blade screwdriver, and an 11 millimeter socket with a ratchet and a long extension.

Door handle removal is fairly simple. On this vehicle, this door panel's been taken apart a bunch of times. Some of the fasteners maybe different for you as well as the . for example, it has a screw here which I believe most cars don't. The reason it has a screw here I believe is because so many of the pins in behind that hold it are broken, I believe.

The way I'll start, is remove your door lock nob, just by unscrewing it. Under here should be two . on this vehicle they're Phillip screws, and just put your screwdriver up under there. Now, there's another Phillip screw up in here, and this pulls out and then right in here you'll see there's another Phillip screw that goes into the door panel. As you can tell I've been fast-forwarding when I just get to the monotonous stuff. You remove that screw and then there's another screw next to the rear side of the pull.

There at the bottom, there are two more Phillips screws. There's an indent in the carpet. Just put your screwdriver in there, twist it a little bit into the screw. This car has a little torx screw here. I'm not sure if this supposed to be there or not. I'm going to remove it. This may not be on all cars and then there's another screw here. This is broken on my car so I know there's no screw in there, but then what there is, is there's a series of clips. You want to work your hand underneath here and it has one clip right here. Get your hand as close to those . you can slide your hand underneath, and you slide it over and you feel it getting tighter and tighter. You give a good pull and get that clip out. Come up here on the top, give it a good pull, you've got a clip there. On these vehicles there are more clips. There are clips in the middle, and more on the edge, but like I said, this vehicle's been apart a few times. Actually, before you pull the door panel off you want to pull your window switch up in the front and then pull it out and then there's a series of harnesses that have little tabs. You press the tab, pull the harness down. This gray one, tab, pull it down. There's a tab here on the black one and the tab here for the brown one.

Now, pull the panel away and there are a few more harness connections back here, a couple of small harnesses with a black-and-white connector and you press a little button here, pull it apart. It's a blue connector here; it has a tab on it that you pull the wires of the blue connector, and pull the tab out. It's hard to see and then there's a gray connector here, so again take a big tab, pull it apart. Take the screws that aren't all the way out. Your door panel is off.

You're going to remove two 11 millimeter nuts that hold the handle in: one there and one you can access through this hole here. It's right there. You want an 11 millimeter socket with a long extension and a ratchet. We'll fast-forward here through just removing those two nuts. The angle I shot it at you can't see anything anyways, but that's all I'm doing: using my ratchet, extension, and socket to remove those fasteners.

Now, what you do is pull the handle up. Pull the front and the back out a certain amount and then pull forward as you continue to pull out. The handle gets to a certain point, and comes out. You can pull it up like that to pull that lock rod off and then your handle rod. You need to twist the handle like this and just make sure this clip comes with it. Twist it back-and-forth, and then up, and off, and there's your handle off.

Now, one important thing, if this flange around your doors is damaged at all, it'll make it hard to get your handle in and out. You may be able to see that is bent out a little bit here. That's because when I first took this a part I found that somehow that had gotten bent in and it was making it very hard for me to get my handle in and out. Now it's bent back. It's pretty much bent back to where it should be. If this is damaged or anything around here, it can cause problems to get your handle back in.

To reinstall the handle dip the back down. Actually, when you go to put a new handle on you'll want to change over your lock cylinder which is pretty easy. It's a big clip right here. Pull that clip out. Pull the lock cylinder out, put it into the new handle, and then put the clip back on.

Now to put the handle back on dip the lock side down, put it onto the latch rod, and then your lock rod just locks right in, like that. This top part goes into that slot and then there's a bottom part that you have to make sure is inside the door and then you can slide it back to a certain point. Then, you want to push your lock in and then your handle's in. Now, we'll take our 11 millimeter nuts and start them by hand very carefully first. This ones really, easier. Just put the nut right into your socket,watch it go right in, onto the stud. Hold the handle while you start the nut and then once it's started then we can fast-forward a little bit. I'll tighten those up by hand and then I'll get my ratchet out. You want to tighten those nuts up nice and firm. They don't have to be extremely tight. You just want to make sure they're good enough to hold the handle on and then just check the lock and handle rods. Now, make sure your door's unlocked. There you go.

Now, we're just going to fast-forward through putting the door panel back on. If you want to see this is regular speed just check out our other videos for the Lincoln Town Car door panel replacement

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