Quote:
Originally Posted by THarms
I'm in the process of doing the same thing... The plastic trim piece behind the license plate must be removed from the inside. There are 2 nuts on either side of the latch handle that are only accessible from the inside via capped/plugged holes on the inside of the door. Once the plugs are removed you can reach the nuts with a 10mm socket on an extension. The remainder of the trim is held in place by plastic "press lock" pieces that can be pushed back through their holes from the inside as well (don't try to pull them from the outside our they will break the trim piece). Hope this helps.
I've got mine all apart, but am waiting on the new latch I ordered from a dealership that I get all my parts from in NC.
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Thanks for your tips. My dad and I worked on it yesterday. I asked our local Toyota dealer and the handle was $90 some dollars so I checked online and found it for $52 plus $7.50 shipping, we ordered that one. It took a little over a week to get it. He has a 2001 Sequoia. We worked on it last night. It was really was involved and just trying to figure things out takes time. We ran into trouble with one of the plastic screws that hold the licence plate against the trim. The right side wouldn't budge and I broke the head of the screw off, finally got that out though. Also the bracket that holds the lock assembly somehow broke. I don't know what happened but it fell to the ground and I didn't know what it was at first. I think we could glue it in place but the glue had a 24 hour drying time and we wanted to finish. The lock assembly is in place but it's not attached to the trim piece like it should, so the other press locks are keeping it in place. Those were the two main problem we encountered on this job, other than trying to fit into the tight places. We almost felt like celebrating when we got the new handle in place. It's great to have the hatch working again and knowing we did it ourselves!