I recently noticed that my drivers side exterior door handle was coming loose when I tried to open the door. I took the interior door panel off, and the problem is more severe than I thought.

After the door panel was off and out of the way, I discovered that the bolt closest to the end of the door was missing. So I looked for it in the bottom area of the door, and sure enough it was there. Went to try and reinstall it.. Nothing happened. Hole is stripped

So... My thought was to thread the hole for a slightly larger bolt, rather than having to buy a new handle assembly (which would then have to be painted too.) However, my attempts to do this with the handle still installed were failures. Just not enough room inside the door. I then decided that I should just remove the entire handle assembly, and rethread the hole with it off of the car. I removed the second bolt, which is still holding just fine, but now I don't know how to get the handle out! It comes loose quite a bit, but it snags on something. The rod is still attached, but I figured that once you pop the handle out a bit, you could just rotate the whole assembly to disengage the rod. Apparently I am approaching this the wrong way.

After doing various searches, I could not find anything that was related to removing the exterior handle.. Most of the threads were in regards to the interior handle, or replacing the cable inside the door. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!!! I have not driven my car in 6 weeks, because I had sent off the passenger side wheels to be refurbished. Now I have them back, and the car is ready to go, but I don't want to risk driving it with this handle issue. Very depressing

 

Quick check while at work, but maybe the links in this post will help:

https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...96/#post334375

 

Email sent.
I do have a anthracite handle base but broken handle.
Have a good one but wrong color.

 

Thank you! I will see if I can get it figured out.