I own a 94 Aerostar XL van and my side sliding door became stuck and would not open. I have seen several messages on this website which indicated how others repaired their doors under the same circumstances and I wish to offer my 2 cents worth:

Remove the upper and then lower interior panels. You may need some new plastic pop-outs for the lower panel if the old ones are too damaged to re-use. You can get these in the help section at most auto parts stores.

You will see a large dollar size plastic insert in the middle of the sliding door below the window. Use a big screwdriver and turn it to remove. This is the guide that holds the linkage from the door operator mechanism to the door latch in the rear of the door. A reach-rod is probably the best description of the part.

Ensure once you are done to reinstall making sure that this grabs the reach rod linkage to steady it and prevent it from bending under normal use.

On the front part of the door you will see that the reach rod is connected with a small plastic pop out "do dad" and you can squeeze it carefully and remove it from the lever it is attached to. It is also adjustable at that point by turning the plastic do-dad. This may be necessary at the conclusion as the outer door operator doesn't quite push the rod as far as the inside one does.

Operate the rod back and forth until the door comes open. It may be necessary to have someone push in or up on the sliding door from the outside to get the latch to release but probably operating the latch toward the front of the vehicle and to the rear a few times will result in the lever in the door latch engaging properly to release the door latch mechanism.

Once you have the door open you will be able to use a T30 torx bit and remove the three screw/bolts that hold the door latch mechanism in place at the rear of the van on the sliding door. This is done from the outside. I broke one of my bolts at this point and once I got the mechanism out of the way, I was able to remove the broken one after soaking it with penetrating oil or WD40. It looks as if lock tite was used at the time of manufacture on these three bolts.

You will see that the reach rod is connected to the latch mechanism at the bottom in the rear of the latch. The problem for me was that the release lever that is actuated when you push the reach rod to the rear of the car was slipping past the release paws of the latch claws or hooks. All i needed to do was bend the release lever which is attached at the pivot point on the door mechanism slightly toward the mechanism from where it enters the assembly. This prevented that lever from being able to slip by the door latches. This problem was inside the door latch mechanism assembly itself. You may wish to simply go get a new one from the dealer but my bend repair did the trick.

Reassembly is the reverse of assembly as described and this is how I fixed my door stuck problem.

John

 

Anyone know of a website to view actual pictures for the DYI to fix my sliding door?

Recently, I went to a website for my daughters Lebaron and found a guy who attached pictures of the same problem. Pictures are worth a thousand words and about 3 hours less work.