Since the weather has improved a little in the last couple of weeks I felt it was time to address a few things actually inside the car. As we’re in the Smarch part of the year, it is still generally too chilly and windy to do complicated things outdoors. I’ll be tackling easier things at first.
Replacing the handle
This time that took the form of replacing my broken driver side door handle. I had recently purchased a used replacement that needed a little paint, so that was job one. First came paint stripper and then some scraping and sanding.
Gooped with paint stripper 
Scraped and sanded
As you can see, this went well enough. I even repainted the handle using a can of 16-year-old satin black Rust-Oleum I had laying around which had just enough aerosol in it to paint the handle.
Wire issues
There was a complication, however. When I took the door card off the door I got a good look at the central locking switch (part 3540135) wires. They were in a real state with a lot of the insulation flaking off and some of the wires beginning to fray. Touching them had the tendency to ground out the connection and trigger the lock. I imagined someone letting themselves in by giving the door a Fonzie-like fist pound and decided to switch tasks to the rehabilitation of this part.
When I got the harness out, the insulation continued to flake. I took it down to the shop, removed the loom, and snipped the wires close to the connector. I then covered the frayed sections with heat shrink tube and resoldered the wires back together. A simple continuity test told me everything was still connected.
Initial state 
Looms removed 
All done
Unfortunately that was the end of the day for me, so I didn’t have a chance to reinstall the wire let alone the new handle. That was missing one of its screws, a type and size I didn’t happen to have on hand, so I’ll have to stop by the hardware store to get one before I can address that. That’ll probably be the subject of my next post.