The lever for the fuel door under the steering column on my 95 SR is really difficult to pull when I want to open the door. Is this a common occurrence? Does anyone have any tips to solve the problem?

you might try spraying some oil down the cable. The one on my 89 binds up occasionally but a little oil solves it.

I have the same problem with my 99. It feels as if the cable stretched and the fuel door would not open. I tried to fix it one day, PITA! For a temporary solution I have it rigged so I can manually open the fuel door from outside. The 99 does not have the locking fuel door. Anyone have an extra locking one?

on my 99 and both my 97s the fuel door is locking in that you can't open it from outside, it must be opened with the pull handle on the kick panel.

all of my monteros seemed to have stretched cables that wouldn't open the door for me. easy solution is to take a very small plastic cable tie and zip tie it on the end of the cable right next to the little ball in the fuel door mechanism. instead of the little ball catching the latch, the zip tie will take up some of the slack and in reality 'shorten' the cable.

worked like a charm, took me all of 1 minute and 37 seconds to complete.

to reveal the little ball I am talking about, all you do is lift up the spring loaded plastic catch mechanism with your thumb while the cable is relaxed; it will poke out of the plastic mechanism then you wrap that zip tie around it, zip it tight and cut off the extra.

Thanks for the tip, I will give it a try.

it has to be a small zip tie so it goes back into the slot where the ball on the end of the cable used to be. leave the ball on the cable, just have the zip tie tied tight right next to it.

Good one. Will try that as well on the wife's 98. On my 95, I just flipped the latch mechanism upside down in the door so now it won't latch. On the 87, I took the door off completely and gained a "safari look."

well, I can't take credit for it, my brother mark came up with that one. what I did the first time was I cut the end off the cable and put on one of those screw tight cable ends from an old trail bike throttle cable. It is still working for me on my 97 LS, but I had to cut out and drill out the plastic mechanism to make the end sit in there and fit, the nice thing about the small zip tie is it will fit in the original spot just right, no drilling or cutting.

Was yours releasing, then catching again? Or were you having trouble even releasing it? Ours is the former. IOW, you need one person to pull the lever inside, and another outside to pull the door all the way open.