I have a 01 tribute. My outside drivers door handle broke a couple months ago then two weeks later my passengers outside handle broke so I had to reach up from the back seat to open my front doors. Then today my inside drivers door handle broke. The mazda dealer can order them but not in my matching color they don't make them anymore and the outside handles have to be painted to match. It is looking costly. We are mechanically inclined but need a diagram or something of the way the outside handle hooks up there are some springs and things and the dealer will not assist at all the say we have to bring it in and pay them 185 to fix. Please help

 

To fix the inner door handle I followed the advice of tonyp and it worked great. I used a spare screw from an old electrical outlet it is 3/4 inch long with a 1/8 inch diameter. The screw head fits in the top of the plastic mechanism as if it was made for it - no grinding down required. The whole job took twenty minutes. I had tried temporary fixes before with duct tape but the screw fix seems like it will last better than the original or any replacement part and it is free! Thanks Tony.

 

I too had my driver's side door handle fail recently. I ended up at a local Mazda/Toyota junk yard for a cheap ($25) replacement door handle assembly from another '01 Tribute. As soon as I got it home, the same broken part fell out of it!!!!!
Needless to say, I took it back and they gave me one from an '02 Tribute. It is much sturdier than the '01 part and the piece that broke off the first two is at least twice as wide as the original. Perhaps that will last as long as I own the car! Lesson learned - don't use a junk yard part if it's from another '01 Tribute!

The fix that Tonyp suggested is quite clever and I would have probably tried that if I couldn't find a junk yard part. He was most courteous in exchanging a few emails to help me understand his fix better so I can use it in the future, if necessary. He doesn't even own a Tribute any longer but was kind enough to still offer assistance!

 

My first post:

I have been using my thumb for the past two years to push the locking mechanism to open the driver side door on my 01 Tribute. I refused to pay almost $ 200 the stealership when I called for a quote. Until this morning, I was browsing through the forum and came across the broken handle thread and saw the the clever post by tonyp. I tried it and it worked. It took me less than 15 mins for the process.

Thanks Tonyp.

 

My 2001 Tribute door handle just bought the farm this morning... Planning on trying tonyp's fix. If I have time, I'll try to take photos. Either way, I'll post back my results.

 

If you do Tonyp's fix, please snap some pics and post them.
A picture's worth a 1,000 words......

 

My door handle broke yesterday and I came across this thread with Tonyp's fix. I tried it thinking I had nothing to lose. Not only was it quick and easy, but it works great, and I believe it will be stronger than the original design. FYI, as someone else mentioned, if you use a threaded 3/4" electrical socket screw, it will fit perfectly without any modification to the screw or the lock unit. Thanks to those that posted the info (saved me somewhere between $80-$300)!

 

Ditto for me as well. I have a 2001 Tribute and my inner driver-side door handle stopped working. For a few days I was exiting through the passenger door, and then in a conversation with somene -- where I explained the issue they told me to roll down the window and pull the exterior door latch to open the door -- which works. I have since then read this forum and tried the zekeindc fix which works. You have to press a little hard to the left portion of the door lock, but it does works.

Of interesting note I just had my outside passenger door latch fail. You can't open the passenger door from the outside. When it failed somene was trying to open the door at the same time I was unlocking it with the fob. You now have to open the door from the inside by pulling the inner door latch.

Before reading this forum I would have expected the combination of these two items to be some wierd electrical problem. But now from reading this forum it is clear that at least my driver's side door is the result of a cheap latch design in the 2001 Tributes. I will go ahead and implement the tonyp fix.

Thanks for this forum. There are some great posts. -- you guys saved me a good chunk of change. I think the irritating thing is that this should be a "free" manufacturer fix, although I've had this problem before with regard to other poorly designed parts with other manufacturers so its not just Ford/Mazda -- it is endemic that every manufacturer doesn't want to foot the bill for poor design, unless they have to.

On a closing note -- I do love my 2001 Mazda Tribute. I have 120K miles and have had zero major issues. So my only gripe are the poorly designed door handles/locks. ;-)

John

 

The in door handle of my tribute 2001 broke today and found this forum fortunately. After i read tony's posting, I was trying to fix it as he suggested, but it was kind of tricky for me to make a small hole and putting a screw into it. Instead I realized that I could fix it with a small plastic tie and it worked..

What I did is simple.. Tie together the cable and the hook of the door handle after removing the assembly, so that the hook will pull the cable when you pull the door handle. Let me know if you need more info. jasonlife@gmail.com

I like my tribute 2001 mostly, but it has very rough idle on cold start during cold season. Anyone has the same problem on cold start during winter.

Jason

 

I had the same issue. I pulled out the "low idle throttle control" (real easy to do) and cleaned the carbon off of the small shaft. Put it back on and ran like a champ.