Interior Door Handle trim help

[SMITH23H2SUT]

Originally Posted by jmudler

I am assuming you are painting the door trim (from your other thread). You will need a way to heat the plastic tabs GM melts to assemble the door panel. I used a very small butane torch vs a heat gun. I found it easier to control where I wanted the heat focused.

To paint the buckets you will need to loosen the tabs in the picture attached in red. I heated and used needle nose pliers to pinch the blobs and mold tabs.

The handle is super simple to remove via screws to the metal plate. The blue circles illustrate where the handle screws in. This area is prone to cracked or broken mounts. I had to use metal (in yellow) (radio back strap material works great) and screw it to the bottom of the arm pad and to the handle on the other end

Then reassemble by re-melting the tabs. It is not a super easy job. Take your time. Watch your heat, you can very easily melt the the texture on the other side of the door panel. I also siliconed the crap all the other joints on the back of the door panel to quiet down the rattle/creaking sounds.

Hope this helps.