I had a crack at replacing the front passenger door lock module over the last few days and have been comprehensively thwarted.

There ought to be a grub screw holding the door handle to the door skin, it is vital that this is undone NO MORE THAN THIRTEEN FULL TURNS, allowing the rear portion of the door handle outer to pull out and give access to the cable that releases the door latch. On the Fabia, someone has been here before, and the grub screw is entirely absent - looking through the access hole there is just a threaded blind hole with no screw. Also, the rear portion seems stuck fast in the door and no amount of wiggling or levering it would get it to budge so I had no choice but to put it all back together and retreat inside.

I googled to see if anyone else had had this issue with a 6Y (1999 - 2007) Skoda Fabia Mk1 and what, if anything can be done? My thoughts were:

1. Drill out the plastic handle and replace the unit with a new one - total cost about £20, but probably moderate amount of faff. 3 spanners

2. Replace the entire door with a 2nd hand one. I'd have needed a mega shallow XZN bit to undo the door from the door hinges but otherwise looks a piece of cake. Total cost about £50. 1 spanner.

Or is there a trick to this that I don't see? All the guides mentioned the grub screw that must not be undone more than 13 full turns, but none say what happens on turn 14. It appears turn 14 makes the grub screw fall into an alternate dimension and the innards of the door to be inaccessible for ever more?

The thing I'm having issues with was part 36b in this diagram

screw #48 is entirely absent, but I am unable to pull #36b horizontally out of the door for reasons I don't fully understand. Its very difficult to get purchase on it for starters! If you look at a Skoda Fabia door handle, 90% of it is the handle bit (#20), that you pull on, then at the trailing end is a D-shaped end cap, I need that to be removed so that the clip on the end of the door pull cable can be popped off the grab bit of the handle (#20), if that makes sense?

On the drivers door, this is the bit you put the key in if you open the door like a peasant - on the other 3 doors this is just a blank lump of plastic that really only serves to keep the grab bit of the handle (#20) attached to the door and the cable attached. #36B attaches to #28 by means of the grub screw #48.

With no options left, I was going to need to pop off the outer cap (#21a) then drill a small pilot hole into #36b, put in a wood screw and get some mole grips on it to pull it horizontally out of the door like a savage.

Managed to get this job mostly sorted a few days later. It was warm-ish, dry and not too windy and a meeting had been cancelled, opening up 90 minutes in my exciting work schedule so I decided to crack on. I tried to extract the door handle end cap with mole grips, but there was too little purchase on the stupid thing, so I went to DEFCON 4, drilled it and wound the biggest, most aggressive-threaded screw I could find into it.

This allowed me to properly grab it with mole grips and by levering it with a screwdriver and yanking at it with the grips it eventually came out the door

Stupid thing. This carry-on is necessary because you need to detach the tab on the end of the door release cable from the handle, obscured by the end cap. with the end cap off, you just pop the tab out of its retainer.

Then onto the inside. Door card off, drop the electric window far enough to reveal the two bolts that hold the glass to the runners and lift the glass out carefully. Then detach the multiplugs for the central locking, electric window & door speaker from the a-pillar, pull them out of the bellows and poke them into the inner door

Then stuff gets really fun. the inner door 'card' is a metal plate held to the outer door with 10 blind rivets. You need to drill these out then wiggle the door card off the door outer, carefully unthreading the wires and lock pin wire and inner door release and things, it came off, eventually.

Then I could get to the actual module that was misbehaving.

the multiplug detaches and then 2x XZN bolts undo and it comes out. You need to swap the inner door release, lock pin wire and outer door release clips to the new one and then bolt it back into place

The reason for this carry-on if that the modules fail due to poor construction which causes various issues. These include the interior light not coming on with that door open, the door not opening/closing on the central locking, or more worryingly that it can either deadlock itself closed (meaning mega destructive access methods required) or that if you unlock the car on the fob, open the door with the dodgy module, chuck the keys inside then shut the door, the car can and will lock all the doors again, because it doesn't know that the door has been opened, locking the keys/shopping/kids/cat inside. So when they start to play up, they get replaced ASAP. The previous owner had kindly provided a brand new module with the car. They are a service item apparently....

With the module refitted to the door with the XZN bolts and multiplug reconnected, I could reassemble everything. this was basically the reverse of removal, involving poking wires back through holes and things, refitting the door card and glass etc. It all went swimmingly, except I hadn't checked to see how big the replacement set of blind rivets were. It turned out they were 6.4mm diameter. My riveter only goes up to 4.8mm. Bother...

So I couldn't re-attach the inner door 'card' to the outer door frame properly. undeterred I found some suitably fat, stubby bolts to keep it together and just carried on, outer door card back on, handle reconnected and stupid end cap pushed back into the hole. I did manage to find the grub screw in the bottom of the inner door, but forgot to refit it to the actual lock mechanism before I reassembled the door. I'll do it in about 6 months when I'm doing the job again.

A couple of weeks later, with the door card still happily attached, I was able to get a friend to lend me his rivnut tool and I re-did all the rivet holes with m6 rivnuts, allowing me to refit the metal door membrane thing properly, and meaning I can get at the innards a lot easier when the door lock mech goes on the fritz in about 11 months time!

It seems to be behaving itself now, the door locks and unlocks on the fob, and it recongnises that the door has been opened if you unlock it on the fob, then only open the passenger door. Also the interior light works on that door too so I'm calling it fixt.