Passenger side exterior door handle not working

[David Carter]

Recently my passenger side exterior door handle has stopped working. Looking at Youtube, it seems this is quite common and a quick fix is to put your knee against the door when operating the latch (it works!). Staring as best I can into the bowels of the door, it seems the rod attached to the handle operates a type of bell crank which in turn operates the lock itself. If I poke the bell crank with my finger, it works fine, so it seems that the rod from the handle is not pushing it far enough. By what I can see there's a plastic bush around the end of the rod that seems to be worn or broken, resulting in it failing to push the bell crank far enough. Does anybody know if these bushes can be replaced, or if not, how much of the mechanism has to be bought with it? I can't see it being beyond the wit of man (even this one!) to manufacture a new part at the back of the garage, but I'd prefer a lazy solution if there's one out there.

On the other hand, have I got it all wrong and is there another cause for this apparently common problem?

 

[Slam]

I sprayed wd40 through the gaps of the exterior door handle and been fine since

 

[David Carter]

Unfortunately I tried that, but no improvement. That's when I took the trim off to try and see what was going on.

 

[Bampz]

Had to change the door actuator on mine last month and when I stripped out the mechanism there were two plastic brushes on the lock, both these were connected to two bars ,one bar connected to the interior door release and the other to the button on top of the door which goes up and down as you lock or unlock the door ,
May be easier to take off outer door handle and check that way