The driver's door will not open in my 1998 cabrio from either side. I know the door is unlocked since the lock mechanism fell out a couple months ago. The door has worked fine and had no indication that it was going to be stuck closed. I have tried opening it from either side but it won't budge. Is there a way to open the door panel while the door is closed? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

if the mechanism is not locked mechanically, you might be able to take the inside door rest off and pull on the rod attached to the handle. But there would have to be a failure somewhere to make that possible. It actually sounds like the locking mechanism has locked the mechanism. If you don't have a way to unlock the door, you need to find out if you can use one of those jimmy sticks to operate the mechanism. to do this you are going to need to get a diagram of the actual mechanism and how it is connected to the rods. You should have two point where you can unlock the mechanism, you saying BOTH positions lost the ability to unlock the door?
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The only failure I had was when the driver door handle lost the nub that it hinged on so it no longer could open the door. But this was not tied to the locking mechanism.