Particularly relevant during cold days/winter months - the Nissan Rogue 2009's door ... suddenly won't open the door when you pull on it. The door still opens from inside.
First, potential Good news: This can be a common, simple problem with Nissan Rogue doors after cold weathers - the cable that sits inside the external door mechanism, that unlocks the door when we pull on the door handle , may just have come out of its housing (ie its not broken, it just came loose).
If we can work out this is what happened, fixing it just means taking the door apart enough to get to the cable and putting it back into its external housing inside the external handle bracket.
APPROACHES TO FIXING THIS SITUATION
First step - Do we still have coverage? There was a voluntary Nissan Recall.
Check with your local Nissan service center if your car still has door handle coverage
If you still have coverage for your car, or if you're unsure - give Nissan a call or your service center a call and first check whether they will cover you for free with a recall if its a simple loose cable.
There used to be a Nissan rogue recall free of charge for this problem because it was a known manufacturing design flaw with the door release cable and handle housing of the Rogue.
Here are details of the recall:
NTB09125 - CP 2008 - 2009 Rogue; Front Door Handles - Voluntary Service Campaign
In certain 2008 and 2009 Nissan Rogue vehicles, to assure customer satisfaction, Nissan is conducting a voluntary service campaign to install seals to the door latch assembly and apply special gr ease to the door cable ends to prevent freezing under certain conditions. See this bulletin for further details.
Source: http://forums.nicoclub.com/new-door-handle-recall-t514407.html
Step two - if we don't have Nissan coverage..
Out of pocket , covering this sort of a fix requires someone in a service center taking a look at my door innards. Based on what they find, I pay for inspection and labor, + any parts. With parts involved it can run upwards of 200 USD.
I also took the car to a local garage to see what they'd say. Turns out its such a small thing, theyd rather ask you to get a new OEM door handle and come back so they will replace it. For some dineros ofcourse.
Opening the door & figuring out if we really just have a loose cable:
Here are steps on how to see whether our cable has come loose (and how we can fix it). I've listed the tools I used at the bottom of this post.
PS - Allocate at least ~ 2 hours for this if you're inexperienced like me
Removing the interior door panel
1. take off plastic cover over bolt in the interior door handle
2. Use a flat , thin wedge (I used a small flathead screwdriver) to pry up the edges of the window control unit on our driver-side door. Then we can pull the entire window control unit up:
3. We can see that there are some electronic cables attached to the window control box I just pulled out:
4. Turn off the car, and then use a small flathead screwdriver to release the plastic latch holding each of these electronic cables into the control box unit. Be gentle so We don't break the plastic tabs. Once its loose, we can just pull the electronic cables out and the window control box will become free. Set it aside for now
5. Now, use a similar flat wedge surface (I used a flat head screwdriver) to pry open the interior door grip/vertical handle plastic cover. Start from the bottom and work our way around - and then we can just pull it off easily
6. Now we will see two bolts exposed inside this handle. Unscrew them. Heres the top screw (you'll need a ratchet to reach the depth here its deeply recessed)
8. Now, using something flat and wedgey, pry open the interior plastic cover of the door all around the edges of the door. You'll feel pins releasing one by one. Then, just lift the entire cover up along your window, and then away. Once your interior panel comes off, this is what it looks like on the inside. Notice that there are two cables still attaching the plastic panel we just removed to the door frame.
9. These two cables are in fact the cables that pull on the locking mechanism when you use the interior door handle to open the door.
Try it - pull on the interior door handle while watching how the cables move. You'll see that the cables move back and forth and its pretty interesting!
Now - detach the cables.
first - pull up on the white plastic housings per cable. That will release the cables from the enclosure
second - move the cables back and forth individually until you have room to move the cable ball or t-shape out of the door handle structure. That basically frees the cables.
Here's a closeup:
10. And here it is, after the interior panel is detached and moved away - a view of the inside panel of the Nissan Rogue.
Next ...our goal will be to remove the window and figure out whether the external door handle cable has in fact come loose or not.
Notice the two large holes on the interior door panel cover on either side in the picture below (I have removed the plastic paper cover from these). These are what will give you access to the window-holding bolts.
11. Remove the window
First - reattach your window control box to the electronic cables we had removed ( scroll up to Step 3 to recall how you detached them ... same picture below)
Second - put the key into the car ignition and turn it ON (but you dont have to actually turn on the engine, just enough until you see the car electronics turn on)
Third - use the driver side window button on the window power box to move the window down until you can see two bolts aligned in the middle of the two holes I pointed out earlier.
Fourth - carefully remove the two window bolts (I used a magnetic pen to pull them out on the last few unscrew turns). Here's what it looks like after you remove the window bolts:
Fifth - Remove the window.
I didnt have enough free hands for a picture of this - but if you just tilt the window forward and down until it feels lose and then pull the window up using both hands from the outside of the door. It will slide out. Place it away carefully.
Sixth - Detach the electrical cable from the window control box and set it aside again. Heres the old picture again:
Finally - lets check whether the locking cable just came loose outside of its housing
At this point in time since the window is out we basically have a clear view into the interior of the door. We can use this perspective to pull on the external door handle while looking inside to see whether the external door handle cable has popped out / come loose.
Here's what mine looked like. My cable had just come loose - and so this helped me decide to move forward to try and fix it on my own. The arrows below point to the housing for the cable/ball end that we can see has come loose and popped outside of its housing.
 |
| Looking down into the door after the window is out, while pulling on external door handle to check the door cable situation |
13. If we found a loose cable, then Great! we have a loose cable. Lets put it back in.
Otherwise ... we may have to just give in and head to a service center as its likely a broken cable.
14. Remove the second interior door panel - remove the electrical cable attachments
Using a pry tool, remove the plastic tabs holding in the electrical cable in the picture below to the remaining interior door panel. There are two fixtures on the panel:
fixture one - use pry tool to pull this out (im pointing to it using a screwdriver)
Fixture two - use pry tool to pull this out as well
15. Remove the second interior panel
First - Remove all the bolts around the edges (do not remove any of the interior bolts - they hold the window rails and you have no reason to detach them)
Second - You'll notice the panels feed through a rubber or plastic housing. You can simply pull the housing backwards and it will come loose and out of the interior panel hole.
16. Remove the second interior door panel - you'll notice the window "regulator" and rails on the other side that we did not detach. Set aside carefully.
17. Almost there! Detach the inside door - handle bracket. Here's a first look after we have removed that second interior door panel. You can see the interior door handle bracket (and the locking cable that runs into it).
This picture pretty much shows what we'll be working with to loosen the door handle bracket and put the cable back in place (Ive already taken out the external door handle so you can see a hole where the external door handle used to be)
Things that hold the door handle bracket in place:
A) release bolt on the edge of the car door
B) internal locking rod ( with a yellow quick-release tab at the bottom that will let you pull the rod out from its bottom enclosure). This Rod is connected to the external door lock cylinder
C) external door handle
We will need to deal with each of those things in order to detach the bracket and put the cable back in place.
18. Remove the release bolt on the edge of the car door
Look at the edge of your car door where the external door lock is. You'll see a cover on the edge. Take this off to expose the release bolt:
Then, using a star-shaped screw driver (I didnt have one, I used a small flathead screwdriver), loosen this screw.
It will not come all the way out, it is made that way- just turn it enough to loosen it.
Now - you should be able to release the locking rod, and then pull out the external door handle
19. Release the bottom of the locking rod
Look back to the picture in step 17 - pull the yellow tab torwards you it will snap and rotate, releasing the rod. Then pull the bottom of the rod out of the hole its in. You've essentially freed the external door handle's locking piece
20. Pull out the external door handle
This was a bit of trial and error for me - what you'll need to do is
a) . Pull out the external door lock (it should be loose now).
Here's the exterior door lock with the locking rod attached ( the bottom is where I detached the yellow plastic before I pulled the rod out ).
b). Slide back the external door handle and then pull it out at an angle (rear first).
c) You'll see some rubber gaskets around the edge of where the door handle parts go into the car metal frame ( its basically a piece of removable rubber outline between the door handle and the door handle hole). Take those and set them aside carefully - you'll need to put them back in before reattaching the handle.
21. Detach the interior door handle bracket
Once the bracket is detached, you'll quickly see that the cable is loose. Here's the loose cable!
22. Put the loose cable back into the bracket!
Thread the cable ball and cable back into its slot, then lock in the white plastic housing into its slot. This is exactly similar to the interior door handle cable we loosened earlier in Step 9
22. Reverse all your steps and put the door back together
Only caveat here is...put back external handle through door frame - make sure you test pull the door handle to check that the locking rod moves!
After that - my external door handle now works like before.
1/4 ratchet with an extension (to be able to get to deep areas) - https://www.amazon.com/Hiltex-03037-Ratchet-Reversible-Direction/dp/B002GQ98HC
small magnetic pencil/rod to hold deep/loose bolts https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0000DINDG
small flathead screwdriver to loosen electric cables from sockets ( maybe just get a variety-size set ? )
pry-plastic to remove pins - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002SRCMO
Total spend: ~ $20
Conclusion:
I was lucky in that my issue was a common occuring loose cable - so as far as fixes go this wasnt really very complicated one. However having done this for myself, I was able to learn how to take the door apart and demystify car maintenance - and now I am wondering whether some other small upgrades and fixes might be within my reach.
I hope you find this useful if you're in the same situation I was in - and if you need any pointers Ive come across in my experience leave a comment I will respond if I can.
