Ken, THANKS for your reply. I am going to save your answer because it will come in handy in the future, I'm sure. Since I wrote in, I was lucky enough to discover the problem. Until this moment, absolutely nothing I tried manually or electronically worked to budge the door. I finally had the door and adjacent panels completely off to examine everything part by part; and then I pulled off the door motor spools. Hidden beneath the spools was a small tangle of cabling, binding up spool and motor shaft, locking up movement in the entire system. Apparently, the cable rusted and broke very near the center of the spool, hidden from view and the rest of the cabling one could see. So for example, under the exterior cable trim panel the cabling looked fine, tension existed as it normally would (because it was actually just tight against the inner spool.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I really appreciate it. I have to say I got very different advice locally from Honda experts. One Honda "master mechanic" suggested the problem was likely a stuck/broken latch assembly; so, to get the door open, "...we sometimes have to just start drilling through the inner metal door frame and then into the latch assembly, and it would then "release" the door if one drilled here and there until you hit the right spots". Glad I didn't do that one!
Oct 28, 2019 at 10:39 AM
(Merged)