Door won't open from inside or outside? Can't unlock? Here's the solution.

So, being the bumbling fool that I am, I had my driver's rear door panel off for the umpteenth time since buying the car, and completely fouled up the reassembly. For those of you who have had your door panels off, you know that it's a pretty simple affair... just open the door, undo two screws, and yank the thing off, then disconnect the lock and latch cables, and the window switch connector. Reassembly is the reverse.

The problem arises when you either forget to re-connect the cables, or (as in my case) forget to re-seat the cable covers in their places after connecting the cable ends. Then, when you go and shut the door, you'll find that you cannot open it from the inside or outside, and locking/unlocking changes nothing. Conveniently , since the door is closed, you also cannot remove the interior panel to remedy the situation.

After spending ten minutes searching online for an answer, then considering which part of the interior panel to sacrifice with my dremel tool to get the damned door open, I got desperate and found a solution. I've copied a picture from another Priuschat thread for demonstration, so I take no credit for it.

The saving grace is that the top edge of the interior panel isn't really held in place by much at all. For optimum panel flexibility, I pulled both screws back out, then rolled the window all the way down. Next, I grabbed the rear of the top edge of the panel (just to the left of the black triangle in the upper right corner of this picture) and pulled it up and over the metal edge that it rests on (maybe 3/4" vertical pull). Then I worked my way forward pulling the panel up and over the edge. When I got about 2/3 of the way to the front of the panel, I had about 1.5-2" of working space between the interior panel and the door shell, and I was able to manipulate the cables by hand. Once the door was open, I just removed the whole panel again, reassembled the CORRECT way this time, and sewed everything back up.



For kicks, I tried the same technique on the front door, and it seems like it would work fine up there as well, though maybe slightly more difficult to pull off.

I hope this is helpful to someone else in the future, I know I was really frustrated, and most of the tricks I've used on other cars (remove interior handle assembly, disassemble B/C pillar trim, etc) just don't work on the Prius.