Good day. I had this posted in the 5th Gen forum, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to put it here, too. Any help would be appreciated.

Hey there.

New to the forum, driving a 2001 SE Anniversay Edition. Bought it from my brother about 6 years ago, he had picked it up almost new.
It's been an amazing car, love it. Trouble is that for a couple of years I haven't been able to open the right rear door. It hadn't been an issue, but with kids and dogs... I NEED to get it open.

I seached and found a way to get most of the panel off the inside of the door. Trouble is that since I can't get the door open, I can't get the panel actally off which seriously limits the access to the workings of the door itself. I can push and pull all sorts of stuff around. I can move the rod which moves the toggle for the passenger to lock (and unlock) the door normally. But none of this actually unlocks the door.
So I'm asking if there's something that I'm not getting from the diagrams? Is there a 'button' in there that I need to push? Do I need to cut the panel to access something important?
I feel I'm pretty handy. I just changed the starter. This doesn't feel like it should be this difficult. I talked very briefly to a service guy at a Nissan dealership was told that it would be a minimum two hour charge for them to even see if they could fix it. Which is why I decided to try.

Any help would be much appreciated. I'd hate to have to sell just because we can't use half of the back seat.

Cheers from Toronto.

 

There are two rods (linkages) within the door. One is the door lock toggle, the other is the unlock itself.

The linkages have a couple connection points so its likely one of them simply got disconnected.

The door panel is actually two pieces which are seamed together horizontally in the middle, just under the armrest. If you can break this seam, you might be able to get the top half of the panel lifted up above the window ledge, and get the door open. Then just remove the bottom half in the proper manner, and seam the two pieces back together.

Even though the above seems easy, I would still source a backup door panel just in case, so you have the liberty to just hack the existing one without concern. They've sold here on the classifieds for as little as $10. Check junkyards etc as well.

 

Ok. Thank you for the reply.

Here's where I can get to. But I still can't get the door open. The rods move well. They seem to have full travel, the door just won't come free. I keep hoping for an emergency release, but I just can't get anything in here to open the door.

I'll try just about any ideas the forum has. In the mean time I'm going to go look over some more exploded views of the assembly and see if I can find anything that's out of place.

Cheers.