My brother got a bit too aggressive opening and closing the rear side barn door on my 89 E150 and snapped the handle in half. This is the handle that is inside the van and is only accessible when the front side door is open.

Can anyone tell me how to properly (!) remove that handle so I can replace it? Is it a quick removal? I hope so. The weather is nasty here right now and I don't want to spend a bunch of time freezing my buns off in the boneyard. Thanks!

Reed, IIRC there is a square opening in the door frame after you remove the trim.
That opening allows access straight into the bolt that holds the handle on it's shaft.
Again by memory, the handle is on a shaft (like a window crank) and is held on with a tork headed bolt similar to the door strikers. Make sure the handle is in the normal position and not in the "locked" or up position so that you have room to slide it off the post and get a replacement on. I don't remember the size socket needed.
The door trim will take twice as long to remove as the handle replacement.

Cool, thanks. For some reason everyone in my family but me thinks you need to slam that handle up and down and slam the door itself shut. I try and explain that doing it gently works just fine, but they just don't listen to me. Hopefully today I can sneak off to a junkyard and find a new handle. That is one thing I do like about the 92-up Ford van body style- the barn doors on the side had the front door larger than the rear.

Ours broke years ago on what is now our parts van. I never could track down a replacement. We kept I large flat head screw driver and pushed the pins down on the top and bottom. It is a very easy fix as long has you can find a replacement.

I found a couple at the boneyard and grabbed one. It is exactly like Catfish said- hole in the door, and a tiny torx head bolt holding the lever. It is dinky, like a T-10 or T-15. Took about 3 minutes to remove.