Mon Oct 19, 2020 5:36 pm by Wylie
The door mechanism is inside just has square cut in the middle that turns and moves the door latch. The grinding you hear is prob dirt and junk in the sliding part of the latch. Does it have the two screws on outside of handle. Remove those and pull out the door handle. Check that the solid square bar is not spinning in handle. Remove the two larger screws in the jam of door to remove latch mechanism, it will have to come out via the oval door opening. It's pretty simple in there. You'll figure out the whole thing once you get it all out. Just clean really well and and when it's all cleaned and painted, grease the mechanism where ever there is metal on metal sliding.
Also if your striker plates (on body, inside door frame) are really worn out you can get a MIG welder and add some metal to it and file and sand them back to full. Those you can't find...
Sounds like the passenger door, might just have the outside handle rod missing the square hole in latch or is rusted solid to the outside cover that has the two small screws maybe. There are two handles in different locations turning on the same single latch mechanism. Outside is with a solid square rod direct to female square hole in latch mechanism and inside is using a long arm to pull the latch back. Does it have a key hole to lock? My passenger door will sometimes lock itself when you close the door because it pops the inside handle up and in a lock position, just from moving around in there. And the outside won't move until you giggle the handle or open from the inside.
Also there is a small piece of spring metal inside the latch for popping the handle back to normal, it's possible that it can be turned passed the settling point and be stuck there as well. Try not to pull apart the latch if you don't have to. Those tabs that you bend back to release cover of mechanism and spring, can easily break off and the little piece of spring metal is really hard to get back in place and loaded. I did find a source for that spring though, off another car.