How to Replace Rear Outside Door Handle 2010-15 Toyota Prius

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

To take our window switch out. We have to pop this silvery-chrome piece off first. So I'll take our plastic trim tool. You can get these from 1AAuto.com. Kind of work it underneath here carefully. Then we're going to pop it straight up. It'll unclip. Put that aside. Now the switch bezel can come up, so again, I'll use the prying tool and start to pry it up. Try over here. Get it to pop up.

So I'm prying it straight up and out. You're going to unplug it, pushing in the lock, pulling the connector out. You could probably remove this door panel with the window switch in place. This just makes it easier because you already have it unplugged. You don't have to wrestle with the door panel while you're taking it off to unplug it. So now we have that unplugged and removed. Take your plastic prying tool, and just lift up. There's a little rubber pad here. You need to get that out of the way. There's a screw behind there. Use a Phillips head screwdriver. Take this screw out. Put that aside.

Then go behind the door handle. There's a little piece of trim here. Take the plastic prying tool and pop this out. Just unclips. There's another Phillips head screw behind there. Remove that. Those two screws removed. The door panel is now just clipped in place. We're going to use our plastic prying tool to just get under the edge here. That one's too thick. Start with a thinner one. Get a thicker one in here so I can pry it. Kind of find near where our clip is. I think there's a clip there. Usually takes quite a bit of force, so once you start to pry it, you'll pop the clips out. Usually you can get a hand under here. Give it a good, strong tug. It clips around the top of the sheet metal, so lift it up and then off.

Now the Bowden cables. You can actually pop the whole door handle out of the trim. Just kind of grab onto it. Just pop it out of the clips, and we'll slide it out of place. Let that hang. Then you put your door panel aside. If the clips stayed in the door panel, pop those out, and they can be reused. Just like that. You can put them right back into your door panel, and they can be reused.

To remove the door handle from the Bowden cables, the top one's the door lock. The bottom one's the door handle. Push the cable out of the holder, and then slide the cable and the little ball at the end out of there. Do the same for the other one.

To remove the water barrier, we need to take this metal bracket off. There's a 10 mm bolt here and a 10 mm bolt here. It also has a Phillips head cutout in it, but I'm going to use the 10 mm socket ratchet and extension because it's easier. Take it out. It's just a self-tapping bolt that goes into a plastic grommet. Put that aside.

To remove the vapor barrier, it is stuck on with this black adhesive. It's called Butyl tape. It's basically forever sticky, and you can remove it pretty easily, especially when it's pretty warm out. You'll just gently peel back on it. I like to a take a fresh razor blade, and you can cut along the edge of it, and this stuff will re-stick back to itself, so as long as you're careful taking this off, you can reuse it 'cause it'll go right back in place and re-stick. Before I try to take this all off, I'm going to pull these wires out of the way. Disconnect this wire for the door lock actuator. So I'm pushing in the lock. Pull it out. So, that'll eventually go through the opening in the plastic. These cables will go through the opening.

This plug for the window motor, I need to unplug that. It's a little bit deep to get my finger in there, so I'm going to use the plastic prying too. Pry up on it. Pull the connector out. It's clipped in here, so I'm going to have to unclip that. Before I get that far, I'm going to unplug the speaker. Again, I'll push the lock in and pull it out. And this harness is clipped up here. Take your metal clip prying tool. Get behind the clip and pry it out. They might break a little bit, but they should pop right back in there afterwards. So, that's loose. It'll come through the opening in the plastic. Now, just work your way around gently peeling this off. We'll just cut the black Butyl tape with a fresh razor blade. Probably want to wear gloves. It will get all over your hands. Just working my way around the door.

Don't worry too much if it looks like you're mangling the plastic. Plastic's pretty stretchy. The Butyl tape is very sticky. You should be able to reuse this without a problem. Even if it doesn't look that pretty afterwards, you're going to put your door panel back over it. You don't see it every day. Not a big deal. The real tricky part is to carefully pull it off of here and not get it to stick to itself too much. Guide these wires out. I should say cables. Guide the wire harness out. All right. I'm going to try not to get it to stick to itself, and then put it in a safe place where it's not going to land on the ground or anything because it will, of course, land on the sticky side down, but it's in pretty good shape. We can reuse this.

To remove the door lock actuator, we'll start with these three T30 Torx bolts. Use the T30 Torx bit and extension and a ratchet. Get them all broken free. Put those aside. We need to move the window run channel just slightly out of the way to slide this out of here. There's a single 10 mm bolt holding it in at the bottom. Just use the 10mm socket and ratchet. Break it free. Put that aside. Now I can move this. It's got some flex to it. Try not to bend it too much. Now we can push in the dual lock actuator and just slide it by. Might have to go down a little bit. Pushing the run channel out of the way, working it down through the door panel. Just kind of around some of the stuff that's in here and guiding it out.

With the door lock actuator removed, you can get to the torques screw that's holding in the outer door handle cap, just going to reach in with our torques bit and extension. The screw is captured in the plastic, so you loosen it up. It will stay in place, though, once it's loosened. There it is. Once it's unscrewed, you can pull it right out. That bolt's captured. To get the other part of the door handle, we're going to unlock this yellow tab so it pulls out like that. Pull the door handle backwards and at the same time lift it out.

To reinstall it, slide the front into place first at the same time the back hook's going to go in. Then you kind of push it in place. Push the lock back in place. Put the cap in, probably click into place. I'm going to hold the cap with my hand and tighten the screw. I don't want to over-tighten it because it's just a threaded metal insert into plastic, so once I feel it get tight I will stop.

This can be reinstalled on the vehicle. When you're reinstalling the door lock actuator, there's a beige part of the door handle that comes down and pushes this lever, and it has two pieces of beige plastic on this particular car that go over it like a little fork, and you want to fit this inside of those, and make sure that when you pull the door handle it actually works this lever and opens the door lock. We're going to go back in the same way we came out. Have to carefully move it around some styrofoam in here, and I'm going to move these run channel a little bit here.

I'm going to guide these cables up. Try not to bend these cables too severely. Just gently bend them. Get them out of the way here. So I'm just moving the run channel out of the way, and I'm pushing the door lock actuator up, and it kind of wants to just fit into the spot where it belongs anyways, so once you get it up in there, it'll kind of slide into place. So it's going to sit there just like that. So, we're going to reinstall the bolts. You might have to lift it up a little bit. There it is. Just kind of self-center once I get one started. Get the other two installed. Just tighten them up. You don't need to over-tighten them. Once you feel them get tight, you can just stop. Perfect.

And just make sure your little child lock button comes through the rubber grommet. You don't want it engaged. Make sure it's in the up position. Otherwise, you'll go to use this, and the inside door handle won't work, and you'll wonder why. A lot of times, the child lock gets pressed by accident. It's a simple fix by just unlocking.

Then line the run channel back up where it belongs. Reinstall the bolts. Tighten it up. We're going to reuse our vapor barrier, so feed the harness through the opening in it over here. Spin it around. There is another opening in here for this, and then our Bowden cables go through this opening here. And feed all the harnesses through, and get this thing pretty close. Like I said, this stuff is forever sticky, so you can kind of just mush it right back into place. It won't look 100% perfect as it was when it was there originally, but it should stick just fine. That was open before. Even if it's a little wrinkly, it's not a big deal. Just mash it in there. Go all the way around the door and push it right back into place.

Plug all your harness connections back in. That's for the door lock actuator. Window motor. Clip this back in place. This one clipped up here. There's no connection to it. Plug your speaker back in. The remaining one was for the door window switch.

We'll reinstall the bracket with the self-tapping screws, self-tapping screw bolts that go into the grommets. Use a 10 mm socket to reinstall them. They're just going into plastic grommets, and they're self-tapping, so when you feel them get tight, just stop.

All right, so the white one goes on top. This is for the door lock. So put the little ball through here. Slide this over. Clip it in place. And for the door handle, do the same. Pop that in there. Slide it over. Snap it in place. Slide the interior door handle into the door panel. Let it click into place. Now the lip of this door panel hangs over the sheet metal lip. So, get it started. It doesn't matter if the window's up or down. Go into place, and it'll hang down like that.

Make sure that your connector for the window switch is not going to get pinned back there so you can get to it, and now we're going to push this back into the door panel. Pushing the trim panel back into the sheet metal door panel, and all the clips will snap back into place, and that's locked in place. We'll reinstall a self-tapping screw here. If you feel it get tight, you just stop.

Reinstall the trim piece. So it's got some clips. Open up the door handle. It's going to slide in place and just click in and lock. Reinstall the self-tapping screw in the bottom of this door pull. Get them lined up in the hole, then screw it in. There's a rubber pad that goes over it. Reinstall the window switch, plug it back in. It will click when it locks, and then we're going to just push it straight down into the openings. It'll snap into place. Reinstall the silver door trim. All the tabs will basically go straight down. Snap into place. That's reinstalled.

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