98 GS door handle replacement?

[Warborg]

I've looked at the various tutorials, and I'm not having much luck at the end... I've got the old one out, the lock cylinder transferred, the handle back in the door and with some doing the locking rod reconnected to the lock cylinder... But for the life of me I just cannot get the rod that actuates the latch to connect... I don't have small hands, so I'm starting to think it's impossible without removing the glass as well, but I haven't really seen anything terribly descriptive on how to remove the glass. At this point I'm pretty much at the throwing my hands up in the air stage and resigning myself to the fact the door simply will not be opened from the outside anymore, but figured I would see if anyone here might at least have a helpful hint or something to get around this before I deem the passenger door handle decorative only...

 

[zkheasley]

Is the rod slightly bigger than the plastic clip it slides thru? I bought a cheap aftermarket 2g door handle once and nothing fit right, I had to switch out the clips with the old ones and do a little trimming on the handle just to get it to fit right.

 

[Warborg]

I got it done...! No, everything fit fine, my hands just don't fit in there well at all... I found a tip elsewhere about dropping the latch assembly so that you can feed the rod outside of the door to do the connection, and then put it in, and that worked beautifully... Got it all together with no issue except was having problem with the bolt on the inside, and my daughter with her much smaller hands reached right in and threaded it up for me... Woot!