Door handles

[Anonymous]

My door handles are falling apart any suggestions on what I can do and keep the same locks!! Please am new to the Bravo seen got mine 3 days ago. 1.8 HLX first car and love it already. also the paint work is not great I have a red 1998 model any suggestions on that. And before you ask or think why did I buy a car with **** paint well I didn't got the car from my Grandad.

 

[lozz]

what is the matter with the paintwork scratches/fading/flaking/chips?

 

[Anonymous]

No there black sort of plastic one's and has gone right down to sort of rubber and you can pick it away.

 

[lozz]

no i mean on the bodywork

 

[Anonymous]

LOL sorry, well it is fading quite alot not to many scratches but is flaking in one place aswell

 

[lozz]

the only problem with red cars is that it is a really hard colour to match, you could try using some T-Cut and give it a good wax, the Autoglym stuff is really good i think they do one called hi polish gloss of something and thats quite good for bringing the colour back out

As for the handles there is no easy way to do it without loosing the lock, you can either get some rear handles of a fiat marea or brava which have no locks presuming you have remote locking

 

[Anonymous]

ok cheers will try the wax stuff and with regards to the locks yeah central locking.

 

[lozz]

i mean you could try and get the handles off and see if you can get the lock barrel out, if it comes out then you can prolly swap them over for a new set of handles

Lozz

 

[Anonymous]

if you gat the front marea handles you can swap the lock barrel across and then have durable plastic handles, or you can see if you can get alfa 147 handles and modify the lock barrel slightly (taking a bit off the shape i understand) and they fit

Andy_sx

 

[Anonymous]

With regards to your paint work you could always get someone to strip back the wax and re wax it for you red is the worsed colour for this.

 

[Ben B]

Just to clarify- it's really easy to switch over lock barrels onto other handles, it's only changing the levers on the handles that proves fiddly and therefore time-consuming- have a look at the repair guide link at the top of the page, and see the handle section

Ben B