How to access early Diablo doors

This is how I went about accessing the doors of the Diablo VT. In this job, I replaced the door pull cups (9421201 & 9421200) and the door/key push buttons (72005036). The door struts were replaced with Murcielago struts (410837987). I also replaced the interior door levers with Diablo 6.0 levers (400837185) since the first incarnation of the Diablo's door levers are plastic and get brittle with age. My original passenger side door lever cracked apart around its axle pin, prompting this job, but I learned that this is a common problem with these plastic levers. I have also heard of cracks in these parts through the central mounting screw. The 6.0 pulls have aluminum levers. Cracked key push buttons are also common.

The cracked pull lever

The replacement

The replacement Murcielago struts allow the doors to raise without effort, but the penalty is that the doors are more difficult to close and some owners have commented on the stress that might put on the ball joints and mounts. I'm willing to live with this because it's more awkward if not painful to be pulling the door up, and it just feels cheap to be standing outside this wonderful car pushing a door up. During this job I would later discover that one of the old ball joint mounts was stress-fractured anyway, so I replaced that too.

To start, ensure the window is rolled up 100% so that you can work inside the door with minimal interference from the window glass. Cover the sill area with some form of protection, be it a towel, blanket, or mat. Something will fall while you work here...tools, screws, nuts, etc. Watch where you put your weight during the repair process when dealing with the door sill area since the side bolsters are ABS shells prone to cracking. Also watch your tool handles when you're banging around inside the door with the window in there since the glass is inside the door next to your hand (and perfectly clear!).

I can fit into the open door space fine, but I can see where some larger people might consider removing the steering wheel if working on the driver's side if freedom of movement is going to be a problem. This is a simple matter of removing the soft cover by "folding" it off its [3] edges and then removing the hex screws that secure the wheel.

To get into the door, remove the forward trim plate. This the contoured plate found in the extreme forward corner of the door. You might need to move the door up or down to access all of the three little trim screws from either inside or outside the car, and there is one hiding on the underside of the plate as well. Then get into the forward cover plate. This is a flat metal plate, semi-triangular in shape, covered in leather and screwed into the door in three locations with trim screws.

Remove two 10mm nuts from inside the speaker box section/cover that you just opened. Dashed lines in my images represent hidden objects or paths.

Remove forward screw from leading edge of speaker box section/cover. This is likely a 4mm M6 hex button-head screw.

Remove the 10mm nut from inside speaker box section. This secures the speaker box to the armrest/handle. This serves to loosen the lowest part of the armrest first rather than loosening the aft end first. Removing the aft end first could allow the armrest to become damaged either by falling off, or by allowing the mounting studs to eat into the soft material of the mounting holes (or themselves becoming bent).

This can be done in one of two ways depending on the size of your arm. Either gingerly lift the speaker box just barely enough to get your hand and an extended socket into the space or maneuver your hand and socket through the triangular door access panel hatch that you just uncovered. The speaker box is still connected to the door via speaker wires, door latch pull (and mirror adjustment switch on the driver's side). You can either rest the speaker box, carefully wrapping it in a towel to protect the leather, or you can disconnect everything. Watch out for protruding hardware of the door panel that could damage
the leather.

Going in through the front of the speaker box, looking up and aft:

OR, go in through the panel

Remove the nut inside the armrest's newly exposed forward cavity first. Remove rear armrest cover plate (aft underside of armrest). This is a small metal plate, covered in leather, on the underside of the aft-most end of the armrest. Three trim screws secure it. Then remove the two 10mm nuts inside the cavity and remove the armrest/handle.

Remove the two trim screws holding main leather-covered panel, both at the lowest level of the panel, normally hidden by the armrest. The panel is now free to lift up ~1 inch to clear the tabs along the window sill so that the panel can come off cleanly.

Remove old weather guard material. Throughout this job, I took advantage of the opportunity to clean as many internal components of the door as possible. Since the lower part of the window glass is also accessible, the glass portion that never gets cleaned can be wiped. During the strut removal, the glass is lowered and you can access the outer face for cleaning. There are several components in the door that are lubricated, so this is another opportunity to refresh any of that such as the window tracks, actuating levers, etc.

The entire interior of the door is now accessible. My preferred job priorities in order of best accessibility are 1) door pull cup, 2) push button, 3) door lever, and 4) door strut.

To access the door pull cup, use a 10mm socket and extension to remove the two screws holding it from the inside of the door. If the pull cup doesn't come out freely, you'll need to be very careful and patient, poking, prodding, wiggling, and coaxing the cup out of its slot. There is a light foam gasket around the pull cup that can likely be reused if you are careful. The weakest parts of the existing cup are the corners if you're trying to keep it intact. Repainting existing cups may be an option. Reinstall the 10mm nuts, done.

To access the key push button, open a can of patience and settle in for some pain and frustration. The above image mentions removing the arm that is near the pull cup, but this is only for accessing the push button more easily. Each door is slightly different from the other since the same parts are oriented differently to fit. For the passenger side, remove the push button lever/arm. This is the arm that is about 8-9 inches long and secured with a 5/16 nut at its pivot point. That gives you better access to the underside of the push button. There is also a small plastic arm that pops onto a ball joint as part of the locking mechanism. That comes off with whatever small prying tool you can find, but be gentle. There are three nuts in a triad that screw onto posts for the push button -- two forward and one aft. There are also washers to watch out for. The forward nuts are somewhat easy, but the aft nut is a bizatch. I resorted to using an angle socket handle for the 9/32 socket. At that, I could only get a fraction of a turn at a time if I was lucky, so it took a long time to get that done. Once those nuts are off, the push button is free to come out.

In order to extract the key locking cylinder, you will need the key and some type of small poker such as a mini flat screwdriver or a knife. Good light helps to see what you're poking at, but your goal is a small metal tab that pushes in and releases the cylinder from the button from the access port in the side of the assembly. Insert the key and turn/play with it while with pushing inward in this area, and viola, the cylinder slides out with ease. Clean that cylinder up. A touch of graphite powder can help re-lube its concealed parts, and reassemble.

After the new button is inserted from above into the door, half the battle is getting the washers and nuts threaded. The other half is actually getting them torqued down since they are nylon and won't twist by hand. It might be easier to get the forward two nuts on there pretty good and then attack the aft nut. It might take several tries to get it threaded since you're likely just doing it by feel via whatever dancing cockroach contortionist act you've just developed. Reassemble the arm, probably with some new grease in all the important places and pop the plastic arm back onto the ball. Test it out thoroughly to avoid ripping the door apart again.

To replace the interior door lever, access the single screw under the lever that mounts the lever to the speaker box section. Plastic style handles demand that you pop the axle out, maybe with some needle-nose pliers. The risk is high of breaking something in that handle, so be careful if you want to keep it. A 6.0 lever is designed with holes that go all the way through the part so as to allow the axle to slide in and out. The lever itself will only allow the axle to enter from the side anyway. Once the old lever is out, bring the cable through the speaker box and fight for all the slack you can get. One tactic is to remove the cable from it's upper mount. You need the slack in order to have the axle attachment end slide up into position freely so that you can jockey the axle and cable to line up with each other. The handle itself will be at a mid-way open position to line up with the side holes to insert the axle. The rest is an art, not a science, so good luck getting it lined up....patience. Once that is secure and you remount the lever to speaker box, remount the cable if you had it detached. If it's too tight to pull back into position, you might consider loosening the tightening mechanism that is secured down in the basin of the door. It has nuts on both ends for you to play with, but again, test it thoroughly before committing to sealing the door panel closed.

Replacing the door struts involves keeping the doors open, and for this, I installed some eye screws into the studs of my garage near the ceiling. I strung my rope through them and down to the door at an angle, where I wrapped the window frame in protective towels so that the rope wouldn't hurt anything. I have a 12-foot ceiling in my garage, which helped, but I'm sure it can be done in a shorter garage or from the ceiling. There will still be a little slack in the door when strut-less, and you might have to put your back up into the door at different stages to use that slack to briefly take the weight off the strut.

I removed the bottom strut by pulling the lock ring with some pliers and then using a flat wrench (or whatever U-shaped tool you can devise) to pry the strut off the ball. The other end of the strut resides inside the door's main structural bracket. Same methods apply to popping that off. Just be to detach the upper mount last so that the door's weight isn't crushing you or the strut, such that you can't easily get the bottom mount off without fighting the door. So...lower mount first, top mount second. To prepare the new struts, clean and re-grease the balls and mounts, and wrap some 1/2 inch heat shrink tubing from the hardware store around the necks of the mounts before you do the reinstall. Let the tubing dangle until you have everything installed and tightened as you like it, then grab the heat gun or hair dryer and shrink it in place as it was from the factory. Re-install the new strut however works best for you. Again, you might have to put your back into the door's slack on the rope to maneuver the strut into position.

**Safety Note: If for any other reason you are working in the door and need to remove that bracket, remember that it is what is holding up the door, so if you absentmindedly remove the bracket, the door will come crashing down on you if it's not secured. I didn't need to remove this bracket or get crushed by a door, but I'm just saying that because I can envision that happening to someone sooner or later.

I sourced some generic black weather-proofing plastic material locally and cut it to fit, replacing the old stuff. I used black duct tape to secure it to the door frame. I may have rushed through this a bit, so please contribute any helpful information or fill in spots I may have missed.

Excellent write-up SingleSeat. This should be pinned under Important Topics in the Diablo section; perhaps in a "Diablo Repairs" thread much like was done with the "Cross Reference Parts Guide for Diablo" thread.

Wow! Fantastic job! Great detailed write-up and pictures. Thanks very much for posting. This will definitely come in handy when I'm ready to do this job myself. What a great upgrade with the aluminum 6.0 handles. I didn't even know about those. Thanks again!

Great write up. I replaced my door pull cups already. Now I need to go in there and figure out why the windows are so slowwwwwwww....

Fantastic write-up, thank you! Should definitely be a sticky for sure.

 

 

Great write up. I replaced my door pull cups already. Now I need to go in there and figure out why the windows are so slowwwwwwww....

 

Allan, you might not need to get inside the doors. Check the rubber mouldings on the window frame which guide the windows. Where they touch the glass, there should be a thin layer of felt/velour. When that wears out, the glass is riding on the rubber which grips and slows down the windows. Happened on my 6.0. Ordered and installed new mouldings and all is well.

Great write up SingleSeat! Thank you for some real tech input!

Great write up! One of my Windows is slower than the other. I'd like to replace my pull cups and locks.

Cool, guys. Hopefully this can save folks some time. It sounds weird, but these small mods really were just the kind of shot the car needed to keep it looking and feeling new. Plus, people might not look at every detail of a car, but they inevitably look where their hands go. I think if all that gear looks tired, the car's fit and finish really suffers.