Hi,

I have recently been having troubles with my driver's side door on my accent GL 98 (4 doors), as it would not unlock anymore (lock only went up halfway). I finally got around to fixing it this week, so I figured I might as well tell anyone else who's interested how to do it. I'm guessing that, although the doors are not the same length, it is roughly the same as with the two-door version of the car.
I also saw a post concerning removing the door panel itself, so here goes. By the way, this repair is NOT that difficult, provided that you know what you're doing. You can be sure that the dealership, however, will charge you a LOT (I called a few), and/or screw up your door panel (as I've found out on several message boards - one dealership simply cut open the door panel. Ugh).




First, you need to take off the door panel itself. There are clips all around the edges, except at the top where the window seal is. There are five screws, two of which are in between the door and the dashboard, and can only be reached when the door is open. There is also the handle, the lever to bring your window up/down (provided you don't have electrical windows), and the black triangular plastic piece housing the stick to adjust the side mirror. This black piece needs to be removed only when you put the panel back on, so you may want to wait until the door is open to remove it. In any case, it is rather easy, as there is only one pin/clip holding it.

So, if you are able to open your door, you will be able to access the 5 screws holding the door panel on top of the clips. This will make things a bazillion times easier. If you can't open the doors, you'll have to settle with removing the two screws inside the arm rest, and the one in the middle of the inside handle.


Then, try to pull on the window lever to see in between it and the door panel. There's a small metal clip holding the lever, the plastic disc under the lever, and a thick plastic bezel (in order words, the lever has four parts, including the clip). As soon as you push the clip off, you should be able to pull the lever and other pieces out, revealing a metal cylinder with dents in it.

Once this is done, if you could remove all the screws (door open), you can simply pull on the edges of the door panel, taking the clips out, and then lift the whole thing up to pull the window seal out. PS. be careful pulling the panel through the inside door handle.
If you could only remove 3 (door closed), then it's gonna be a big pain. You have to push the seat back, and do whatever it takes to pull the door panel past the area between the two doors. Then, you should be able to get your hand in there and play with the latch, the part of the door which interacts with the hook in order to close/open the door. The latch is connected, via metal rods, to the inside door handle, outside door handle, the lock cylinder and, finally, the lock that you pull on. The latch is probably where the problem will be (obviously). From here, there should be a piece that you can pull on to open the door, or you may hold parts while trying to unlock the door until it finally works.

[Apparently, Hyundai uses plastic components in the latches and, to top it off, does not use stainless steel in making the rest of the components, such as tiny springs. So after some time, the springs may rust to the point where they break, or the plastic parts may simply break. In these cases, if you're lucky, you should be able to simply replace those tiny parts. In my case, a screw/pin holding a rotating part was so rusted that it was no longer tight enough, and moved around the screw, causing the other connected parts to get stuck. In this case, there was a part where I could just fit an elastic tightly in order to keep the piece tight while still able to rotate. I guess this is case-by-case, but as long as there's no visibly broken piece, I'm sure you can figure out a way.]

PS. BEFORE THIS PART, you should use pliers to turn the gold cylinder and pull up the window, so that it doesn't get scratched or messed up somehow by the mechanism and rods inside the door.
So once the door is definitely open, and you can have the door panel off, you can look inside and unscrew the outside door handle, as well as the three screws on the side of the door holding the latch. Then, you can pull out the whole mechanism, along with the handles, and see what's wrong. This might be a little tricky - make sure you don't bend anything.


Hopefully, you can figure out what's wrong and fix it/or buy a new piece and put it back.
Can't think of anything else. You can post a question though.

Okay, good luck everyone!