How Do I Get a Riviera Door Open When the Latch is Broken?

A friend gave me a 97 Riviera and the door latch is broken. The door cannot be opened from inside or outside the car. All the how-to writeups say to remove the door panel to fix this. And to do that I need the door open! So how do I get the door open? I was thinking if I took as many screws off as I can maybe I can move the panel enough to work the latch. Any thoughts?

Driver's or passenger side door? Does the lock actuator work?

I had this same problem when I got my car. Passenger side wasn't used that much and rusted in position of shut and no-go unlatch at all times. Get yourself several wooden wedges to widen the gap between your inside door panel/cover and your outside part of the door. You're only going to be afforded so much more room, and it isn't going to be much! Probably in the neighborhood of 3/4 of and inch. Get a can of PB Blaster. Here's the tricky part. There's a small block that your door un-lock mechanism on the in side of your door (the rotating part that manually unlocks your car from the inside) connects to. If you can get UNDER that block with a robust hooked piece of wire (like a good old fashioned wire hanger from your closet) made into about a one inch hook. Spray that block that's frozen up with some PB and try and pull that block up from underneath. There's a part that has to move in an upward direction. I ended studying my door that would open with the inside panel off a lot. It's quite difficult to see, but not really that hard to accomplish. You don't have to flood the inside of you door with PB Blaster either. If you do, you'll run the risk of ruining your door seals with the solvent. The difficult part is you really can't see what you're doing while you are doing it. Oh yeah, a really bright flashlight to shine down in the gap is crucial. Oh yes, there's a really good write-up on how to get the inside panel off the door with several nice photos too.

I had a door stick the other day and was able to get a slim-jim into it to get it open. After looking some I found the door was not un-locking completely, what I did was catch the latch mechanism with the slim-jim and released the door. Probably the same principle Jeff mentions, I just didn't use the wedges and flashlight?

I was worried my door handle repair had gone bad, and since my passenger side has broken I wasn't sure how I was going to get into it, AND it was running when this happened!

ironclyde wrote:

Driver's or passenger side door? Does the lock actuator work?

Passenger side. I guess I don't know if the lock actuator works or not. I can hear it when I hit the lock switch, but maybe the mechanism has become disconnected. I will roll the window down and try to peek down there and see what I can see.

Birdawgxx wrote:

Oh yes, there's a really good write-up on how to get the inside panel off the door with several nice photos too.  

It seems the write up I saw the link to the pics was broken. I will look again.

I see it now, on the interior tech write ups! Duh!

https://rivperformance.editboard.com/t317-write-up-interior-door-panel-removal#2570