How to Replace Interior Door Handle 1994-2002 Dodge Ram 1500

Hey friends. It's Len here at 1A Auto. Today we're going to be working on our 1996 Dodge Ram 1500. I want to show you something fairly basic. Removing and reinstalling an inside door handle. Can be super easy. I can do it, and you can do it too. As always, you end up needing any parts, you can check us out at 1aauto.com. Thanks.

Okay, so we've got a couple of Phillips head screws, one here and one here. We'll take those out. We've got our two screws. They're both the same. This right here can move around now. That's nice. Cool. All right, we've got another screw up here. That over there. Looks the same as the other two. Nothing special. Set all three of those aside.

Now this door panel, we're just going to feel around, make sure that there's no more screws. Sometimes you'll feel a couple coming along the bottom there. This does not feel like it has any, so we're doing all right. We have a couple of plastic trim tools. The reason why we're using plastic is because we're going to be going up against the paint. And if you're worried about your paint, then of course you don't want to scratch it up with metal. Just come right in here like this.

Just going to go right along. Okay, lift this up. As you go, you're going to just kind of jam it towards the forward position or I guess towards the front of the vehicle. There we are. And that's just because on the backside of this we've got all these little clips and they go inside these hookie-dos. These things, I don't know why Dodge did it, but they've got some. So you need to slide straight up and down. You've got some that you need to slide forward and back. Whatever. I'm sure they had their reasons. But anyway, we've got this almost off now.

So now what we're going to do is we're going to get the wiring off of the back here. So the next thing we're going to want to do is disconnect this right here. There's a little tab. You can usually grab it with your thumb. If you can't, small pocket screwdriver. Just grab it, pull it away, give this top area a little wiggle. Should want to slide right out. Awesome.

So right here there's a little tab. Can use your thumb if you want. Try to push it. Just be careful for a pinch. I'm going to use this. I'm just going to push right here. That lets this come up. Now if we come this side, can lift right up on this. Awesome. I'm just going to go right like this. Let's see if I can get it to go down and through. This is great. Now we can get our door panel right out of the way. Keep on plugging away.

All right, so it's time to get this handle off of here. We're going to remove this bolt right here, this one right there. You use this Torx bit right here, but of course you can also use something like this, a 10 millimeter. Go whichever way you want. Okay. 10 millimeter or the Torx. The Torx bit is a T40. I'll show you what that bolt looks like.

It's pretty close. Just a teeny bit more here. That bolt out of there. Same as the first. Awesome. We're going to carefully try to bring this out. There's going to be ... This right here. You can see the bar. Okay. That goes right down into here. This white thing that you can see is just a little lock that locks the bar in. So what you do for these, and generally speaking, you can do this inside the door panel, but it's a little bit harder on camera, so I'm kind of giving it a little extra tug here, but you're just going to pop this off fairly easily here generally speaking. There you are. Once you do that, I put my hand in here, and then the rod just slides right out of here. Okay. Slides down in there. And then once you do this, it locks it in. This my friends is our inside door handle.

So we have our handle, whether it's new or old. We're going to get our rod. We're going to put our rod straight through this hole right here. And then once it is, we'll just latch this over the arm of the rod and that'll lock it in. You can see the rod there. We'll get the handle out of the way, just one second.

Once I get it in, I can show you. It's kind of hard to do just like that. Okay. Here we go. You can come down right here. You can see I put the end of the rod down through, and then I have this part of the white part over the rod arm. Just right like this. I'm going to switch to my 10 millimeter. Like I said before, you can use that Torx bit if you want. This ratchet's a little bit shorter, a little bit nicer if we're working in-door. Now looks good. Get this one started.

Now that both of them are started, we can just snug it right up. Awesome. Perfect. All right, let's continue. All right, so it's going to be time to get the door panel on here. Before we go ahead and do that, we're going to take out all these push-pins. All right, and we're going to put them right into the door panel and then we'll put the door panel in and the push-pins will hold it to the door.

To do that, you're going to use something as simple as this. It's a little forky tool. Just like that. Give it a little twist. Whatever you got to do to get these puppies to pull out. They make them nice and long for you. They look like, they got like a little ear there. And that's where it's going to slide over the door panel and then these little ears right here are holed into this hole. We'll take all these out and we can continue.

So these little tabs, the push-pins, get that area right there that I showed you before. It just slides right in. Okay, bonk. There we are. Do the same for all of them and then we can continue.

Okay friends, let's get this door panel on. I'm going to take the electrical connector or the electrical harness here. Try to bring it up and through this. Can be a little tricky sometimes try to get it out of the way. Just give it a ... There it is. Just have to be a little forceful with it sometimes. That's okay. We've got our electrical connector right here for our mirror switch. We're going to plug that in. You can tell which way it goes because it has this little nub right here. That lines up with the nub in there. Slide it in. Give it a tug. Don't pull the whole thing right off the door though. Put that back on there. Cool.

All right. Let's bring this up. What we're going to pay attention to now is the door handle. Just going to try to pull the door handle through its hole. Slide this over. Awesome. We've got our lock. Just take the lock, just bring it right through the hole. Awesome. Bring the door panel down. Get it so all of our little push-pin/piton are going to be lined up with our holes. Once you get a couple of them started in, generally speaking, all the rest will be lined up.

The hardest ones for me to see are the top ones. But it is important to get them lined up. Awesome. Down along our side here. The same thing along this side. Just line up as many of them as you can before you start bonking them in. One in the center here. That is lined up but not going in. There it is. Oh yeah. Awesome.

I just want to make sure that your door lock can flow up and down easily. If it can't, this could be wedged a little bit. Maybe the bar got bent in some of the process that you were doing. If that's the case, well, you're just going to have to pop this back out of the way. Let's see what we can do about bending it because you want this to make sure that it can go up and down. That looks really great. I would say we can continue.

Now we're going to take our long screw and we're going to go right up in here. Try to find the hole real quick and then we'll get out of the way. Here it is. Okay. We don't need it to be too tight. We don't want to break the plastic or anything. We just need it to pull this right up against. That looks pretty great. We can move along.

Grab our switch here. This is just going to slide in. Let's take a look at. It goes in the backside first, and then the front side. Bonk, bonk. Very nice. We're going to grab our little cup with our two mounting screws. Put them facing the right way. You got your holes. You can see where it goes right down into the door. Phillips head. Start that one in. Start this one in. Okay. We're just going to bring it all the way down. And snug. Awesome.

Thanks for watching. Visit 1aauto.com, your place for DIY auto repairs, for great parts, great service, and more content. (silence)