Broken Door Handles

Tip: Broken Outer Door Handles

In the rare event that our exterior door handles should break on your Subaru, I felt that you should know beforehand that they're an absolute pain in the neck to fix.

It took me a good 8 hours to replace it in mine (2 hours of which was figuring out how to get the window back in afterwards). Part of the problem lies in the miniscule size of the holes through the door which Subaru left to put your hands to manipulate the locking mechanism. I have long, slender fingers so I was able to fumble around for a while and get it right. However, if your hands are not the smallest in the world, you might consider getting two long pairs of needlenose pliers and manipulating the lock that way. It just might make the job easier. Another possibility on early wagons, submitted by another page viewer, is that there are 3 screws holding in the latch assembly and the latch assembly can be removed and moved to a location where the connecting rod is easier to get to.