Flaw in rear door design???
 

Well it took me 10 years to find it, I closed the rear driver's side door on my 2014 with a moving blanket partially in the door jam (it slid down off the seat) and it popped two of the clips holding the wheel opening molding. I saw it later and couldn't figure out how the clips broke and then started looking at the door. The lower outer most part of the rear door isn't actually the door, it's the wheel opening so if anything is in there and you close the door it pushes out on the trim piece breaking the clips rather than just not closing and latching.

New clips are on order, hoping I can replace them without having to pull the entire trim piece off.

Yes, if you open the door and look you see that the door is the outer part of the fender and the fender flare acts to keep junk from going into the door jamb.
I dont necessarily think this is a "flaw" but i can understand how it hurts your feelings. My daughter recently jumped out of the back seat of mine so fast her seat belt didnt retract and she slammed the door closed on the seatbelt buckle while it was in the door jamb. Made an awful sound, crunch/clank/scratch/pop. It bent the inner door jamb, scratched it to hell, and really made me sad. Kinda hard to blame Toyota on it and call it a bad design or a flaw. Sometimes life happens and thats just how it is.

I had the same thing happen with my son. Then a few months later, different son, different rear door. It pains me to look in those jams anymore (not really, but you get the point), but I don't see a cheap or easy way to fix it. Plus they'd inevitably do it again as soon as I got it repaired lol

Likely going to have to pull the whole panel off to replace the clips. Toyota likes using specialty clips that arent fun to install and usually dont have great access to get to. Also if youre bending the panel to reach in and access the clips you could easily bend/twist the panel where when reinstalled it may not line up flush. Take if off and replace all the clips necessary would be the best "fix" to that. I bought a bag of clips from a 3rd party (amazon) since Toyota wants $2-3 per clip and I have a bag in my garage for if it happens more (I have 2x boys, its bound to happen more than once or twice for me).

Yeah, clips are on order from Amazon... they sell them in bags of 100 for what 3-4 clips from Toyota would cost. After looking at the door earlier it broke off three clips at the bottom.

What's the best way to get the trim piece off... just grab and pull outward or is it easier to use a plastic clip tool?

a big YANK and break them
the way the little plastic tab folds out, it makes it so the clip wont allow the trim piece to pull outward without breaking the clips. Dont be scared, know you are going to break the clips, put some ear muffs on if you dont wanna hear it because its gonna sound like you broke everything but give it a big yank and break them and replace them.

also the amazon clips from ChyNa are usually a poor fit, and are typically loose. Hopefully you got some better than usual ones and the fitment is tight.

Thanks, that's what I was guessing. Clips will be here tomorrow so I guess I'll see how they fit. If loose I guess I'll just buy them from Toyota. The truck is 10 years old with 68,000 miles so I'm due to put a few dollars into it.

I bought one of the big "kits" for Toyota specific stuff from Ebay i believe. Its labeled as a "toyota push pin and clip kit" and has everything from the old halogen headlight pucks to fender push pins to bumper clips ect ect. Some of them fit "decent" and some of them need a little gorilla snot on them to make them fit tight. The 89-95 pickup square fender liner plugs in the kit dont even fit at all, like they are so short they wont "clip" into the body so they are :worthless
Luckily i have been able to get myself out of pretty much every situation i needed to with the kit, even if some are slightly loose they will physically work with some slight modification like take a business card and add a sliver as a shim under the clip.

Years ago, back in the last of my working days, I worked at a Carquest. The old fashioned, small town kind (before getting gobbled up by Advance Auto Parts). In the back room were rows of binnacled cabinets filled with bulk automotive clips of all kinds; they were good, heavy duty ones. You could get a couple of all kinds, more of the more common types, to keep on hand in your shop. Find a good Carquest in a small town. NAPA stores likely have the same, as both are parts store molded from the same cloth. Unlike O'Reilly's, Autozone, Advance, etcetera. Well, those are molded from the same cloth - just cheaper and chintzier.

Fixed, not too bad just not something fun about yanking hard, and I mean hard, on a piece of 10 year old plastic.

https://i.ibb.co/JC7B3m4/image0a.jpg

Ordered the clips off of Amazon, they fit perfect and only the orange clip had a little slop in it which was taken up with one of the foam washers.

Amazon Clip Link

Easiest way to reinstall is to put the clips in the trim and then push them onto the door.

https://i.ibb.co/NKhQS9s/image1a.jpg

There is a screwed in "clip" at the very top of the door that I didn't know about. It broke in half when I pulled the trim off. Clean break and it's screwed and foam taped to the door. I just used some 3M Emblem Adhesive tape to put the broken piece back on.

https://i.ibb.co/jvJSqYT/image2a.jpg

good job
its not fun
its not nice
it sounds like you broke everything
sometimes you might break something
but thats the only way to get it off.

The plastic gets brittle when it is old. I had to replace the front fender liner and the wheel arch molding last year and most of the clips got broken in the process. Best to have some spares on hand when you undertake a job like this.

The Amazon kit I bought had 50 blue and 50 orange clips. I replaced all of them.