I'm having trouble opening my driver side door on my 88' 4runner. I cannot seem to pull up on the lock/unlock tab which opens my door, which seems to be stuck and does not want to come up to release the door. Inserting my key to unlock it doesnt work either turns out. I thought the locking mechanism from the door jam was defective so I went to the local wrecking yard and found another locking mechanism to replace it with. After 30 mins of fiddling with it, I got it in but now it has completely locked it self and has made it harder to unlock the tab. What am I doing wrong? Please help cause I really hate crawling through the passenger side to get in my truck! Thx in advance.

 

Took me an hour to figure it out but, I got it fixed. Forget that I asked cause I thought some people here would have trouble with this known problem. Thx anyways.

 

what was the issue?

 

I ended up pulling apart the door lock assembly and found out that there was a rubber bump stop that was really worn down, which was the cause of why my driver side door tab was difficult to unlock. I replaced it with a rubber tile spacer, which I had cut to fit the size and added a bit more in width to accommodate the unlock tab. After that was done, I placed everything back together: door lock assembly, rods, door handle, and door panel. Tested it with both key and by hand and it worked like a charm. Also modified the door handle a bit too cause it was getting hard to open the door from the outside handle. I figured that the driver side was more notoriously opened and closed through out its 22 years of age, which explains the wear and tear. All is good now and I am going to do the same to my dad's 87' Pickup 4X4 cause he also has the same problem.