Very often after we fill up on gas and shut the fuel door completely - our rear door will not open completely. The sliding door gets stuck - eventually it opens. This is VERY frustrating for a family of 5 .
We do no have power sliding doors.
Thanks for any suggestions!!!!

 

On the manual sliding door Uplander's like yours and ours, the fuel-flip door has attached to it where you cannot see it (unless you start removing the interior rear side plastic wall from the left side of the vehicle) a roughly 4 ft long cable (just like a bicycle or motorcycle cable) that ends down underneath the left sliding door and it is spring-loaded with a pivoted small steel arm that is designed to keep the sliding door from opening full whenever the fuel flip door is opened...of course its purpose is to prevent wiping out and destroying the door and/or the fuel filler door. You problem apparently is that either this cable has bound up and won't move anymore, or your cable may need an adjustment, because cables can and do stretch over time. Try this experiment...open by hand the left sliding door as far as you can, but don't quite cover up the fuel door....then with the door open at this position, open the fuel flip door and have another person with a flashlight looking in the big cavity under the door where the flip-bar should open and close whenever your assistant opens and closes the fuel door....if this flip bar isn't opening and closing fully, then there's your problem. In my opinion, at best, this is a "Rube Goldberg/Jury-rigged" invention on the part of GM engineering...a mechanical cable design that eventually will stop working. I'm sure you can replace it yourself, or adjust it if you pull off that plastic interior panel. FWIW, our 08 Uplander came originally with some pretty big holes molded in the plastic wheel-well splash guards in this area, and the first thing I did was to fill these gaping holes with good silicone caulk to keep the salt/road debris out of that area, which is precisely where this cable is located. If you live in the North Country, it may be rusted out or filled with road crud and cannot move anymore. If you are not worried about children or mechanically deprived adults from flipping open your gas door at the wrong times, you always could get under the sliding door and simply hack off that cable with a small bolt cutters. I assume that the GM engineer who thought this cable up did not receive a salary merit increase from this idea. If it's not rusted out and not stretched out, try spraying into this cable (both under the sliding door, and thru the big hole back into the fuel door's hinge area a really good penetrating lubricant, such as Castle Thrush or a good cable spray lube from a local motorcycle shop to get it working again. By the way, before I sat down and spent two hours last summer figuring this cable system out, our local Chevy dealer's service manager had absolutely no idea that this cable was even there. Hmmm...tomorrow I'm going to spray Castle Thrush lube into ours to help keep the winter crap out of it.