Anyone have a W123 door assist strap break,?

Think it might be one drawback to owning a 20+ year old car, but the metal door check strap broke in half this morning.

Anyone else ever replace one of these? How big a deal? (driver's door).

[wolf_walker]

Piece of cake, pull door panel, look inside and you'll see it, couple bolts, little pin where the strap meets the door hinge area, comes right out. Lube it well when it goes back in, all mine were creaking, and several were not very old.

No big deal at all. Pulling the door panel is the tricky part. I pull the mirror adjuster just to get it out of the way first. Pop the inside cover out of the latch with a small screwdriver. Pop off the handle chrome cover. Unscrew the armrest, and remove it. Go around the panel with a stiff flat scraper to pop all the clips. LIFT the panel up and off. I may have forgotten a few little items but they are obvious (I.e. lock knob, latch trim, etc.) The strap comes off with the two bolts/nuts removed and the other (fwd) end you have hanging there comes off by removing the clip on the pin and driving it out. Just remember to LIFT the panel before pulling it off. There are slots in the door metal that the map pocket hooks into. Otherwise you break the pocket.

Also very important - As your strap is broken in two. Put something between the outside of the door and the fender so you don’t push the door open too far. Doing so may really piss you off.

Hope this helps.

Just to let you know, I did the same exact thing to my 126 yesterday...
I'm waiting for the part from Phil now...

The strap on my driver door works fine. The mount that is on the body broke off. I welded it back to the body but it broke off again.

[whunter]

Hello 82-300td
Sounds like your strap is bad.
I rewelded the body mount three times for one customer; before I could convince her that the strap was defective.

Originally posted by 82-300td
The strap on my driver door works fine. The mount that is on the body broke off. I welded it back to the body but it broke off again.

Note that the earlier 123 models had a much better built check strap and they are interchangable with the later models. If you buy a new one, buy the earlier version.

Good luck,