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This Sunday I had my doors apart, to try to lubricate the window mechanisms for smoother operation and less likelihood of them breaking in the middle of the winter, and to do the same to the door latches, and it occurred to me that I am not impressed with the door pulls that came on the truck.

For starters, they aren't the same. In fact, the passenger side one only fit one of the two screw down holes, the other side had a self tapping screw going in far enough to make a shiny mark on the metal plate below, but that's about it. Also, with the silly lift kit and mud tires on this thing, I need all the help I can get climbing aboard - and I don't want to rip the steering wheel off using that for support. So my right hand uses the handy external grab bar, but my left flails unless the window is already open. The door grab handle area is a good place to get some support (yes, I know, I'll rip the door off by its hinges soon enough, but that's another whole project...).

So I started by looking at my random handle collection to see if I had anything that would work. The two mounting holes are about 5-1/4" on center, and a bit of offset away from the door panel would be nice. No dice in that collection, although I did find some things I'd forgotten I had.

Since my time is pretty much zero cost, I started thinking about what would work... metal plates screwed down, with some heavy dowel bolted on, or metal tube welded on... maybe. I didn't really have the exact right thing lying around for this, either. But I did have some random 3/4" electrical conduit. And some wall mounting clips for the conduit. And some 1 1/4" by 1/4" steel that already had some holes drilled in it at convenient distances from an old gate I am still trying to figure out how to use.

So I roughed one up, with the metal cut long at first, and the holes were just right. I test fit a 12" piece of conduit, with the excess running forward, and it also seemed about right - a little extra grab room, and easier to reach when in the cab with the door open, and still not in the way of those pesky window winder handles.

Then I cut the metal bar down to the right length, just a bit shy of the conduit diameter for clearance, ground the cut edges to some nice bevels to minimize future bloodletting, and bolted things together. The results are very nice!

I then picked up some furniture cap things at the hardware store to finish off the ends of the conduit, and for a rainy, or rather sunny, day, four 1/4-20 1" flat head stainless steel bolts and four "hidden thread" t-nut things to replace the clip-on speed nuts next time I have the door panels off. These will make things a little more rugged than the #12 screws I have going into those speed nuts now.

This photo shows the passenger side assembled, and the caps and new bolts:

A close up of the bar cut and bevel grinding:

  This shows the "finished" passenger side (a little paint would help!).

This image and the one below hopefully show that there is plenty of clearance for the window winder, and space for my gloved fingers around the new handle. Also, the extra forward extension is really useful for climbing in and out, and reaching the door easier to pull it shut.

They seem quite beefy in use. When grabbed there is no "wiggle" or sense of impermanence. They are attached, of course, just as firmly and in the same way as the OEM metal-core foam door pulls, although the way they stick out puts more leverage on them when hoisting myself up into the truck.

I've already been thinking that it might be nice to bend the front towards the door panel about 45 degrees, and the rear in at 90 degrees, using longer bits of conduit. But since these work, I am unlikely to re-engineer them anytime soon!