Please help! Can't open the door!
 

98 explorer sport, drivers side door is locked and won't open, not even with the key - the electrics sound good - I'm sure it's some mechanical breakage in there - forum search turned up some good advice such as:

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/s...ght=door+stuck

BUT, I have to get the dang door open first! Help! Any advice? Thanks!

All I could think of was to try a slim jim and see if that got you in--so did you get it open?:)

yep - pressing the unlock button and pulling up on the outside handle repeatedly somehow managed to to do the trick.

Anybody else finds themselves with this problem, here's what I did:

got the door panel off, found a broken spring inside the latch - holds up a connecting rod between the outside handle and the latch. Couldn't get the spring back in place, so I engineered my own solution using a different (longer) spring and a fishhook (3/0 Gamakatsu kahle live bait - ;) a red offset-shank EWG hook looked better but I couldn't make it work). Seems to be working.

The rod I'm talking about is threaded on the bottom and has a yellow plastic nut on it with some kind of linkage leading into the latch. I attached my spring to the bottom of this rod and found something to hook it to higher up on the handle hardware.

I don't know how much corrosion that area is subject to or how well the materials I used will hold up - only time will tell.

But thanks for asking.