I love having a minivan but there is just soooooooooo much shit that can break expensively. Doors especially.
My kids are bigger now. Maybe get a real passenger van…or an older minivan where the doors are manual and let out a satisfying KERCHUNK when they are opened/shut.
You can probably make that happen with yours. When our Toyota Sienna lost power in the doors we decided it was too old to invest that much money into them. It was much cheaper to cut away the cable and disconnect power so they operated just like any manual sliding door
On my car, the actuator that unlatches the door is electronic and apparently can get “stuck”, keeping the door from opening more than a crack.
Fortunately this most recent time I figured out how to fix it, by jamming a screwdriver in there and prying it open. But even then I had to disconnect the battery for a few minutes after to reset the door system. Why things gotta be so complicated? Why can’t the latch mechanism be cable driven like, ya know, every other car.
Also there’s nothing to grab hold of to shut or open the door from the inside. So I think a manual door conversion isn’t possible. But worth looking into for the future.
Sometimes.
Sometimes they even shut by themselves.
Signed, a Honda Odyssey owner.
I love having a minivan but there is just soooooooooo much shit that can break expensively. Doors especially.
My kids are bigger now. Maybe get a real passenger van…or an older minivan where the doors are manual and let out a satisfying KERCHUNK when they are opened/shut.
You can probably make that happen with yours. When our Toyota Sienna lost power in the doors we decided it was too old to invest that much money into them. It was much cheaper to cut away the cable and disconnect power so they operated just like any manual sliding door
On my car, the actuator that unlatches the door is electronic and apparently can get “stuck”, keeping the door from opening more than a crack.
Fortunately this most recent time I figured out how to fix it, by jamming a screwdriver in there and prying it open. But even then I had to disconnect the battery for a few minutes after to reset the door system. Why things gotta be so complicated? Why can’t the latch mechanism be cable driven like, ya know, every other car.
Also there’s nothing to grab hold of to shut or open the door from the inside. So I think a manual door conversion isn’t possible. But worth looking into for the future.
That’s unfortunate. Our minivan was older so the latch was mechanical, and the handle identical to the previous mechanically opening door