How to Replace Exterior Door Handle 1988-2002 GMC Sierra 1500

Now, before we start this job, it's important to make sure that you have your window in the up position, it's going to make it much easier overall. So, to start getting the door panel off of here, we're going to need to remove some stuff. You're going to have a couple of little plugs here, and those are covering some Phillips head screws. So, I like to just pop those out with my flat-head screwdriver. Now we're going to use our trim tool and we're going to remove this outer plastic piece here to do that. There's going to be a little clip hidden inside there, there, and over here. So, I'm just going to start right along here. Continuing with our plastic trim tool, we're going to lift up on this plastic piece here, starting from the rear. There we are. Let's disconnect all this wiring. Switch right here, just pull that right out of there.

The next thing you're going to want to do is remove this area right here. Yours is probably going to have a nice lens cover over it. Ours is broken. You just kind of come right down along the corner here and you should be able to pop it off. And then we're going to disconnect the wire. Lift up on that. Separate the two. Now, we're just going to use a little forkey tool to remove this push clip right here. Now, we'll move along up to here. Now, we're going to remove this piece right here. It should pretty much just lift straight up and out. There we are. Now, let's continue with our trim tool, we're going to come right down along the bottom of the door panel, and try to break it free. Put the wiring down in here, lift straight up on it, remove the panel.

So, the next thing you'd want to do is slide this. There's a little area right here that looks as though it should have a screw. Ours does not. But if there is one, just remove that. And then once you do, you should be able to slide this and then draw it away. Right behind here, you're going to see the rods that run right along here and connect over there. We're going to disconnect them from the backside of this. Just pull this out to where we can see. I can see this rod. I'm just going to come down with my nice small screwdriver and just try to separate these two parts. There we are. Do the same to the other one, of course.

Next, it's going to be time to remove the speaker. There should be a screw here and there. Ours are missing, but remove those two screws. And then right here, there's a little tab, push on this, and then you should be able to pull the speaker away from the panel itself. Now, we're going to disconnect the wiring that goes to it right there. Let's tape up this window. The next thing we're going to do is start carefully pulling this plastic back. And this is so that we can get to all the wiring because we want to make sure that we can disconnect it and have it nice and safe after we take off this panel. There we go. That looks pretty decent. So, now, we're going to remove this plate right here. You're gonna notice that there's a whole bunch of these mounting bolts right there. They come all the way around. All of them are the same in exception of the one right here.

We're going to carefully try to move this around just to see if it breaks free. You want to keep in mind that the window regulator is mounted to this plate and the window regulator also is attached to the glass up here. It has a couple of little rollers that are going to go into a track. So, if we were to pull this down, we could, of course, pull a tug on the window, which might pull it down, the window's glass, so obviously, you want to wear eye protection. Safety is the number one concern.

The next thing we need to do is remove the rivets that are holding the window regulator to this panel. You can do that with something like this, with a drill and a nice drill bit or you can do it with something like this with a nice cutoff wheel. Obviously, if you use a cutoff wheel, you might, you know, nick this area around here a couple of times, in which case, you would just paint over it and it's not that big of a deal. That looks pretty good. I'll punch the rest of that out.

Hammer and punch, go right for the center there. Okay. Those popped out. One more here. There we are. The window regulator can move around. If you look right through here on the panel, you're going to see where the rods kind of are secured to the panel itself. You should be able to push those away. There's one right over here as well. Awesome. Let's remove this bolt. So, now, you have the rod that comes through this right here. We're just going to pull that right down. Okay. This is looking good. Now, we're just going to let this dangle. Obviously, you want to make sure you don't put any weight on any of the wires. We don't want to give this any tugs. We're going to grab onto the window regulator. Just slide it towards the front. And then we should be able to kind of pull it down assuming I can get it out of there. So, now, we just need to disconnect the wiring for it. Squeeze right there and draw it off.

Now that we have a clear view, we can remove this 10-millimeter right here. And then if you were to look on the outer portion of the door, you're also gonna see another 10-millimeter. So, now, I can move the handle around and you can see this little metal clip right here. That's what's holding in this rod. If you come right down along here with your pocket screwdriver, there's a little tab. You just kind of pull that out in a way, you can bend it a little bit, and then you should be able to lift up on this clip. There it is. Then once that's up, the rod should want to come right out of there. Now that we have all that out of the way, we're going to remove these screws so we can get this off of here. So, now, we can move this around. I'm going to see if I can get this up and out of here.

Now, I'm just going to draw up on that rod, pull this right out. So, now, to get the lock out of here, I'll turn it over. If you look right here, there's kind of like this little slanted angled piece and that's the lock that holds the lock into the handle. To get this out, we're just gonna come right under here and try to lift up on this plastic, and then I'm gonna use something nice and flat like this bit driver, and I'm gonna press on the lock part and just try to push it through. There we are. Now that we have that lock out of the way, I'll come right down here, bend that. That's our rod. I want to make sure that it goes back in the same direction that it came out. Do a quick comparison to make sure you're dealing with the same part. This looks perfect. We'll set this aside to be recycled and we'll continue.

Now that we have that lock in there, we're going to make sure we get this rod back where it came from. In case you were trying to remember which way it goes, if you were to look at the backside, you would see there's little ears, that's what's supposed to hold on to the rod right inside that groove. So, we'll just shove it through. Once it goes through, just give it a nice little tug, and make sure it's locked in. That's great. Let's get this on the door. Okay. That looks great just like that for now. So, now, we need to make sure that the red rod that's coming from the handle is going to slide down into the slot on the latch. And you also want to make sure that once we get that done, we put this on there as well.

So, now, if we move the handle around a little bit, we can line up the rod with the hole down in there, and then we're going to carefully get this handle back in. That looks good. Let's take our little bolts. Start that one in there and then, of course, the one on the outside right there. Now that they're both started in, let's go ahead and snug them up. This is sitting perfectly. So, now, let's just go ahead and start in these bolts for the latch. Just a couple of threads. Snug these up. So, now, we're going to get this rod back up onto there. Let's try and get this on there. Oh yeah, that looks good. Give it a nice tug, make sure it doesn't fall right out. It's clipped in good. You can see that you have your two rollers that are facing in the same direction and then you have one that is not. The two that are facing in the same direction are going to be the two that go up inside the upper channel up here.

So, what we're going to do now is we're going to put the first one through and then we'll put the second one through and we'll let the window regulator hang just like this. The next thing we need to do is get these rods. These are gonna go in between the window regulator and the panel itself. Something else that I want to show you before I put the panel up is this wheel right here is going to go inside the track that's on the inside of this door panel right there, okay? This little piton right here is going to go inside of this piece right there through the bottom. This is all going to be inside the door panel so it's going to be hard to see. So, I'm trying to let you know ahead of time what's going on. This goes in the track, this goes in the piton there, okay? We'll lift these up, get this thing so it's kind of sitting where it's going to need to go. I'm just kind of resting the rods up here, where hopefully they'll stay for a minute. Now, I'm going to get everything else lined up.

Get this back inside of its groove. Just make sure that the two wheels up on top are sitting inside the groove where they need to roll. That feels perfect. Rollers are up here, rolls back up. I'm going to put the one with the piton in now, slide that right up and in there. The other rod is going to ride right in underneath that one. So, we'll just put them both so they're kind of up here for now. So, now that we have the window regulator and the rods lined up perfectly, we're just gonna take this, I'm gonna put one bolt in, lift up on the panel, make sure that these ears go over the panel that's on the door there. It should sit right in there. I'm gonna slide my window regulator around till I can find my rivet holes. We've got one there, there, there, and there. Perfect.

The next thing we're gonna need is some of these right here. Nice, beautiful rivets. These are 1/4-inch. We're gonna need four of them. Slide that in and through there. I like to start them all in before I tighten any of them up. That way there, I know that it lines up overall. Now, before you rivet this in, it's important to double, triple, quadruple check to make sure you have everything on the inside of this door panel set up right. You need to have the rollers in the channel up along the top. You need to have the roller in the channel that runs along here. You need to have the rods sitting inside the little piton area on that unit that I showed you and coming up in this direction here so you can get to them. Once you've done that, you also want to make sure that the wiring for the window regulator is plugged in and then we can continue on by using this right here and putting in these rivets to hold the window regulator to the panel.

Just make sure the rivets don't fall out. All right. That's a good sound. It means we're at the end of that rivet. At that point, you can of course trim off the excess. We'll do the same to all.

The next thing we're going to do is cut off these little ends here. I like to use my cutoff tool. I'm just going to come along the top here and put in a few of these bolts to try to hold this panel still for a minute. And then we're going to test the window regulator ahead of time before we continue on any further. That way there, if there's any problems, we can fix it now. Click this in. Get the key in the on position. I'm going to try not to tear this tape because I might have to reuse it. I'm hoping that I won't, but we'll see. Beautiful. The window is going up and down the track perfectly straight. It's going down when I tell it to go down, it stops when I tell it to stop, and it goes up when I tell it to go up. This is perfect. Let's get the tape off of here and continue.

So, now, let's check to make sure that these rods are working perfectly for the latch and, of course, for the handle. I'm going to start with this inner one. I'm going to pull the rod that has the little piton that goes to the locking mechanism inside here, the electronic locking mechanism. I'm going to pull that towards the front of the door. That's the unlock position. Now, I'm going to grab that other rod and I'm going to push this up. This is simulating that the door is in the shut position. I'm going to pull on that rod and this should come down. That means that I can open the door now. Let's go ahead and shut that door. I'm going to do it again. Give the rod a pull. Awesome. Okay. Flip it back up. Now, I'm going to take that first rod with the piton for the locking mechanism, I'm going to push it towards the latches. Let's pull on that same rod that's going to work this mechanism here. Okay. That is not working.

So, now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull on this other rod, the locking rod, and now I'll pull on the latch rod again. That works great. Let's do the same over here. I'm gonna grab this outer handle. Right now, I'm in the unlocked position. So, I'm going to put pressure on this, pull on that, and it releases. Door's shut. I'm gonna lock it. Push on this, pull on the outer handle, okay, it's locked. I put unlock it. Awesome. This works perfectly. Let's continue. So, now that we know that everything functions as it should, we can continue on by bolting in the play here or the door panel. We're gonna use all of our little bolts and just go right along the outer area. I'm just gonna start them in and then I'll snug them all up once I get all the way around. Awesome.

Just reaching here, we're going to grab the wire for the speaker. Connect it in. Make sure we don't have anything on the magnet here. If you were to look at the speaker, you're going to see a little tab there and then there should be one here. We're going to come at an angle and slide them right into these little grooves here. Should slide in. Pretend that they're both in, press it, it should click right in. So, now, you would just, of course, want to get this back on here. For us, it's not gonna stick. You get yourself some butyl tape and get it to all stick back on there. It's probably a great idea.

Now, it's going to be time to install the inside door handle. If you were to look at the backside, you're going to see an area right here for the door handle rod and then an area right here for the lock rod. I'll grab those rods, I'm going to line them up. You can start with whichever one works best for you. I'll go with the one that's farthest away because I'll have the most amount of flexing action. Make sure it clicks in and it does not fall out. If it falls out, you have an issue. Next, I'm going to do the lock or the handle one. Obviously, it's very hard to get the right angle. Okay. I got it lined up. I'm just gonna squeeze it right in there. Give it a nice tug. Make sure it does not fall out. Now, we're just going to take this unit, we're gonna press it up so it's up against the panel and it's sitting in the grooves, and then we'll slide it towards the latch.

So, now, for good measure, I'm just gonna throw a rivet right in here. You could try to put a nut and a bolt and reach your hand back through there if you have to. Okay. That's nice and tight. I'll just cut this off now. So, we're just going to get this in here. It should have a nice little cover over it. So, now, it's going to be time to get the door panel back on. If you were to feel right down along here, you're going to feel there's a ridge. That's going to sit right over along the top of this. And then, of course, you have all these little push tabs that are going to go inside of all these holes after we've done that.

Let's grab our wiring, get that all ready. I'm going to click this in because now's the time to do it before I get this together. I've got my wires in my hand, I'm just going to kind of pull those through. Let's get this up onto here. Okay. Look to make sure your pieces all line up. There we are. Trying to get the cover on here. Let's make sure our door's unlocked. Should slide right over. A couple of loving bonks. That feels good. Let's get this area back on. Now, it's going to be time to get this reinstalled back into the door panel. We'll connect in our speaker wire, super important. We've got our mirror wire. Click it in, give it a tug. Get my wires situated here. I'm gonna turn this, slide it right in. This one, slides right in. Everything is nice and secured. You want to make sure the speaker wire is going through this lot and not over here, otherwise, it could get a pinch coming across there. To install this, you're going to notice you have a hooky-do right here towards the front area and then you have your clips right here that are going to latch right there. That being said, come in high and put in the front area first with the hooky-do. And then right here, give it a nice push. Couple of loving bonks. Perfect.

We don't want to forget about this. You've got your little clip here. And as you can tell, it slides down. You also have your hooky-dos there, they're gonna ride along this ridge right there. Come up nice and high, push in, slide down. Give it a nice tug. Make sure it does not rattle around and it's not falling off. We need a little clip right here. Now, it's time to get these two screws into the handle area here. Make sure it's nice and tight. Don't forget about your little covers in whichever hole you want, nothing special. Now, it's going to be time to test our work. So, you want to make sure you have the key in the on position, the vehicle does not have to be running. Let's go ahead and try to put this window down and then back up. The battery's a little low in this vehicle. Perfect. Passenger side. Oh yeah. Let's go ahead and test the mirror. Right side. Yep. Awesome.