Interior door handle snapped

Well, something in the mechanism snapped, I heard a little pop as I opened the door, and now my driver side interior door handle is floppy... It still works to open the door, but does not "snap" back in position like it used to, it stays 1/4" ajar of the door panel and does not have that "spring back" action all the way.. As a result, it does not fully raise or lower the window unless you push the handle in place, since the handle's divot does not push on the door to switch by itself. All in All nothing terrible since you can push the handle in and mimic normal action, but it's broke and I know it :-( Anyway, that is a corollary, the issue is the door handle does not feel very sprung anymore and I need to fix what snapped. Anyone else seen this before? Apparently that happened on 986s due to a broken srping, but 987s have a different design. I need to go dig for a partial (hopefully) door panel removal DIY now and see what broke, or hopefully just popped off. Can't help but grumble that my 44y old 912's handles are still functional, damn plastic parts

There is a 997/987 door panel removal DIY out there somewhere. Pretty straight forward and simple. Folks do it often for speaker replacement. Good luck with it

Okay... Well I fixed it... Good triumph/bonding moment here... I found the DIY on the door panel, and while I am very grateful for it, some of it confused me, so here's my addendum (for the confused, like me, nothing against the write up, quite the contrary) and the fix for the floppy door handle. here is the excellent shot showing all the important bits from the DIY: Like they say, undo the blue and red bits and pull... The triangular part advice is good too, pull the bottom, then up. On the circular plastic cover behind the door handle, I just pushed on the bottom edge and it popped out, presto... The part that confused me is when the Door panel article mentions the "Outer door pull". It's a logical name, but I could not figure out he meant that : The outer part of the door pull, the outer shell of it, what I sometimes refer to as the "Oh $hit handle". That was the hardest part of the door panel removal for me, the damn thing did not come out easily as it wasn't obvious which direction to pull... I pried it from all directions a little at a time... Can't help you there. It goes back on easy though ;-) Now the juicy bits: As I suspected from the noise my door handle made when it snapped, it was a spring that snapped out of its housing, and therefore did not "spring" anymore. Nothing broken that I can see.... As you can tell on the pict above, the spring rotated 180 degrees and both its extremities aren't pushing or pulling on anything anymore, so it did nothing to pull the door handle all the way back in place (and thereby trigger the window mini-up/down switch). The trick for me was to put the spring back in position per the red arrows, 180 opposite. There is a notch in the upper moveable part of the door pull mechanism to house the top leg of the spring, so that the spring pulls the handle back when you stop pulling the other way, and the bottom part tucks under the *fixed* portion of the door pull. I unscrewed that fixed part initially but it was not necessary, in fact it made things worse. Leave it be ! - The top leg of the spring just goes inside the notch (top arrow head), the trick is the bottom since it's strongly sprung ! - For the bottom part, you see a little plastic notch above my bottom arrowhead. You bend and force the bottom leg of the spring back over than notch since you need to bend it upwards at 45 degree angle to clear the obstacles. Then I did it again and forced it under the notch, with some swearing. The spring felt more "natural" in the "above the notch" position, and the door pull worked again, but it looked like it'd fall off again in a heartbeat, nothing was really preventing it from slipping again. So I forced it a bit to be under that notch, where it cannot escape again, and where my arrow head is. It should stay in place and if that's wrong, it does not alter things much. It's a friggin' spring putting some force on a plastic bit, not super high tech german engineering ;-) Shoulda taken an "after" photo, huh? Sorry ! Oh well, it makes sense when you look at it and play with the handle to see where it should be "helped". Cost $0.00 ! Time: 25 minutes or so including head scratching + 5 min for reassembly. PS: In hindsight, I should have investigated the door's water barrier and why my bottom door pockets are always wet when it rains. Next time !!!

Thanks for the detailed followup!

Deschodt: The black plastic piece, including the spring retainer or "notch" as you call it, is held on by 3 screws. I've seen this "notch" fail, and release the spring tension, once before. This piece is common to both doors, and is merely installed "upside-down" on the opposite door panel. Should your repair fail to hold, you can simply swap this spring retainer piece from one door to the other. Best regards, Croc'ed

the same thing happened to my car less than a week before the warranty expired. i was able to take my car in to the dealer to correct the problem one day before the warranty expired. problem fixed at no charge under warranty.

What I call the notch is a little groove in the plastic piece that is held by 3 screws, into which the spring's end fits.. Or maybe mine wore a groove into it and there is no notch at all on a new piece... Don't know... Duly noted on the potential re-failure, now that I can pull my door panel in minutes, I will know what to do if it fails again. Swap, Epoxy or a new part, if you can buy them.... Apparently there is no part # on them, but the above poster got his fixed at a dealer, so.... Edit: I think I found it in PET, the whole unit, the plastic 3 screws part + the other bit...

Same thing happened to me this morning (2007, warranty expired 7/12/11, 47k miles). I can't tell you how valuable this thread is (and the door panel removal article). Thanks Croc'ed, as upon close inspection, I found the plastic base to have a hairline crack, which allowed the plastic to "flex" (only a little, but enough), resulting in the spring end passing over. Switching with the other side was the perfect fix! One helpful reminder (mentioned as the triangular part above): When you remove the side mirror trim, remove from the bottom, as there's a tab at the top. I pulled from the top and broke the tab off. Super Glue will hopefully work.

Well, count me in as another victim of this cheesy bit of engineering. Sheesh, I just dealt with the shifter cables & now this. Oh well, it looks like an easy fix and it's free. But still, come on, Porsche . I'm not impressed. Thank you Deschodt for the writeup!

Well, I got this fixed without too much drama, but I gotta say prying the door panel loose was a bugger. It takes A LOT of force to pop those clips loose. POW! 2 of them broke so I got 4 from the dealer to have a couple spares. It really helped to use the pictures in the article as a map to where the clips are to know where to pry. I didn't want to take the other door apart to swap sides with the broken part, so I bought a new one. Mine cracked, allowing the spring to come loose (see pic). You have to buy the whole shaft assembly to get the new plastic piece. It's about $10 and it's a new design that only works with a redesigned cable. You don't need the new cable. Just use the plastic piece off of the new shaft to replace the broken one, that way you can use your old cable. Thanks again Deschodt for the writeup - it really helped!

Ok; I can officially join the broken door handle club. Mine (2007) snap, she has about 25000km's on the clock.... I fail to understand what Porsche was thinking with this design? Motorplan expires Jan 2012, so waiting for part to arrive to have her fixed next week.

The new superseded part is an 997 555 381 03 for the drivers side and 997 555 382 03 for the passenger side. I have one and will post pics next weekend when I tackle the repair. My local parts guy didn't know about the superseded part.

You know, this w/e I was digging into the door of my 72 911 to replace 40y old felt/seals, and I was reminded of this post... It's all plastic **** now... The old car has all metal, and it lasted 40y without a fault, doesn't get wet when it rains either ;-) Thanks for the superseeded part #, I'm going to order 2 in advance...

AAGH! I'm picking my car up for the exact same thing in about 2 hours from the shop. $220 for them to fix this. I wish I would have seen this earlier and tried to fix it myself! Oh well, thanks for the detailed info incase I need to fix the other door handle later!

Ok mine just snapped too. At least I got 88,000 miles out of mine. Thanks for this thread, it is invaluable. Well maybe worth $220.

Also, FYI, just determined that that little bit of movement on the door handle also controlled the last bit of travel on the window going up. As you may know, when opening the door, it comes down about 1/4", then goes back up when the door is closed to complete the seal. Well , if the door handle is now flopping inside, it won't trigger the final raising of the window to completely seal when the door is closed. Not a big deal if the car is in the garage, but outside parked in the elements this presents a problem. I was going to put off the repair for a while, but I've decided that would be unwise. Just FYI.

Nice writeup - tagged in case I need this in the future. Typical Porsche build quality :hilarious:

All great write-ups! :thanks: Mine let loose at 68K miles. I was floored at this absolutely cheesy engineering! :wall: The post that the spring tensions against at the bottom broke clean off! I got the whole thing off the door, and dremeled it flat and cut about a 3 inch piece of metel and attached it to the frame with a screw and washers. This formed a new post where the plastic one had been. It works perfectly now. Cost? About a nickels worth of metal and three hours of aggravation! I expect this level of engineering in a Yugo, not a Porsche ! :soapbox:

I had the same problem with my car back in the Spring. The driver's side broke and was followed a week later by the passenger's side. I have no idea how that would happen given that one gets about 100 times the use as the other one. Both sides replaced at home for about $28.

Aack!! Mine just snapped this weekend, so will be ordering two new ones to repair and perform preventative maintenance on the other side. Thanks for the great write-ups!

Mine pinged years ago, but it never really bothered me until I found this thread and saw how cheap it would be to fix. I've found a breaker that will sell me 2 of the previously enjoyed original parts ( 997.555.382.02) so I figured I'd get 2 in case one fails early on. They are cheap.

Ok, so unfortunately I now can't get hold of the older "02" part. So I've ordered the "03" plus the new bowden cable to go with it. Has anyone fitted this new bowden cable into the 987.1 ?

The axle bearing is actually three pieces: one with the vulnerable tab, one the cable attaches to and a spring. I used the new piece with the tab and the existing piece with the cable attachment. This allows you to use the existing cable.

Thanks eskaman. I picked up the parts from the dealer earlier, plus 10 trim clips. Whole lot came to £28, which I didn't think was too bad given that about £12 of it was on the clips.

Those clips are annoying. You can reuse them (sometimes) by resetting them to their original configuration with a couple of screwdrivers.

Just wanted to add that if you move the return lever after you get the top notch in place, it makes it easier to move the bottom portion of the spring into place.

Well after about 10 pulls it happened again - will need to get new parts!

Yes the door anchors can be reset. Simply leave them mounted in the door panel, wedge your trim tool underneath the anchor's base (the seat that sits above the door panel) Force it upwards quickly - it will take some effort but should not feel like it will break. It should snap right back. NO need to pry at them with flatheads/picks etc. I used a tool like this

I finally got round to this repair yesterday evening. I was hoping to use the new bowden cable, but that would've required what looked to me to be removal of the lock in order to seat the other end of the cable into, and I didn't have the instructions or inclination for that. Instead I cannibalised the new axle bearing for the plastic mount with the tab, and used that with some of the old parts. Whole thing took 1.5 hours. Treated the door panel to some new clips all-round, since I had already bought them. I couldn't work out why they've changed the design of the bowden cable in the way they have: the weak point is still the plastic spring retaining tab, which is the same design as before.

did this today, swapped left to right door plastic piece only problem encountered was , alignment of door handle was off from try 1, it was catching on the door panel, so had to reposition the piece and retighten the 3 screws , all works fine now