That is good work indeed. The rod from the inner handle to the plastic link has come out of its seating and left me with an inoperative inside door catch on a couple of occasions, and I have become quite adept at removing the lower door card and the "Morris Marina" door handle to re-attach the rod - which requires the compression of spring while the rod hooks into the nylon link. I can do it in about 20 minutes. Unfortunately it has just this minute happened again while the car was with MMC for service and they have charged me 1.5 hours labour (£165 plus VAT) to fix it, which I am not best pleased about, but will now become very much their problem should it happen again.
PS. I like your idea of putting a cable tie over the joint to hold the rod in its seat. That really should secure it for good, unless the plastic link should break - in which case your resource is invaluable.
