Driver's interior door handle stiff / broken

[XJ_Driver]

I've been having problems opening the driver's door of my car from the inside. The interior handle used to work fine but then I noticed, perhaps a month ago, that the handle was becoming progressively stiffer to operate. I had planned to remove the door card and take a look but never actually got that far: one day I pulled on the handle to open the door and it snapped clean off where it attached to the cable. Since then I've had to drop the window and open the door using the exterior handle every time I get out - which is a pain! Pulling on the exposed cable nipple using a pair of pliers I can feel the cable is stiff to operate, yet removing the door card has revealed nothing obviously amiss inside.

I plan to replace the broken interior handle, and the cable too, but wonder is the cable the likely cause of fault here or should I also replace the lock mech? Just wondered if anyone else has come across this problem before? Incidentally, upon inspecting the broken door handle I noticed it is date stamped 1997, and yet the car is 2002MY. So unless Jaguar were using old stock handles on the line when my car was built I imagine this handle has already been replaced with a s/h part previously.

But any advice appreciated - Thanks.

[RichardSEL]

Check to see if your door's dropped a tad?
Its latch might be resting on the "B" pillar's latch catch?

[XJ_Driver]

Thanks Richard - but the door sits fine and hasn't dropped. I'm going to replace the broken handle + the cable and see if that fixes it.

[RichardSEL]

There's been an issue on Passat B6 where, in the very cold weather, the door handle doesn't operate the latch.
A early batch of the Bowden cables' inners go hard in the cold and become very stiff and don't return under normal lockspring pressure when handle is released. So you could find it's that. But concerned that it's so stiff that the handle breaks though...
Keep us updated?