Because my driver door handle on the outside does not work anymore, I need to remove it. Found some helpful how-to's. 
It's a late 2005 TF, so the only colorful clip I have is the red one, the rest MG-factory thought it wise to make it a one time assembly, in their assumption it would never fail. Wrong assumption!
To make the job easier, I also tried removing the door lock mechanism held by the 3 torx screws.
I managed to remove the lock pin rod from the lock mechanism, but no luck in removing the rod to the lock barrel. 
I was hoping by removing the rod from the barrel to the lock mechanism, I could avoid removing the retaining clip on the lock barrel and dismount the door handle and lock barrel all in one, by pulling the whole door handle unit including barrel to the outside. 
But after jiggling the lock mechanism around for more than a hour inside the door, no luck, the barrel in question cannot be unhooked from the lock mechanism. 
The door handle is held in place by 2 special threaded bolts for plastic mounting and at the bottom by a plastic push clip. All that I could disassemble, but now the door handle removal is still prevented by the lock barrel. This is held by a U form spring-clip, and I have no clue how to remove that. Therefore my attempt for the described workaround, that in the end did not work. 
So it appears I need to remove the malicous U spring from the lock barrel. 
Any ideas how this can be done ?
Any other make-life-easier tricks in removing and refitting the door handle of course also very welcome. 
Doing this job makes me wonder how on earth did they do this 20 years ago on the assemby line, it feels like you need chirurgical skills for the (dis)assembly. I can hardly see what I am doing inside the door, it is half visual half by feeling the fingertips. 

Thanks for knowledge sharing. 

 

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