Cruisers Forum
Main Forum => Tips and Tricks => Topic started by: TomHanlon on August 23, 2013, 09:29:12 am
-
Here I sit in wonderfull Lancaster county in my PC. At 6:00 am my German Shepherd comes to me and puts his cold nose on me. Which in dog talk means "dad wake up I need to go out now". So I get up, get dressed, get the lease and pull the door handle. What the ... The door will not open. So we have to go out through the passengers door. After he has done his business we come back only to find the door will not open from the outside either. Back in through the passengers door we go. I get my screwdriver and take out the three screws that hold the door latch together. I take the inside part off the door and inspect it. I can not find anything broken. I push it together again and it still will not work. Boy, I sure wish I had my morning coffee. After a couple more trys at taking it apart an putting it back togher, I decied to put the screws back in and try it. Sure, now it works. It turns out the screws had come lose and the inside handle came pass the slot that turns the lever. So please check your screws to make sure they are tight, but don't strip them.
After two cups of coffe and a nice breakfest, all this now is funny, but at 6:00 am it was not so funny
2o2.
-
Yes, best not to have a screw loose! :lol
Bruce
-
Yes.....BUT, if you're gonna get involved with owning a motorhome, it's because you have a few loose screws. And I've been at this stuff for over 30 years.
-
Thank You Tom
I spent the day preparing for Petoskey and checked my door. My screws were loose, pyho in fact I found a few more loose around my door frame, all tight now.
Again Thanks
Bill G
-
Had same problem, mine were only lose a bit but the fix took more than an hour to get the door open to tighten the screws.
I will say that my door gave me a warning that I ignored. The lock handle started to require an extra tug from outside, to get the lock to release. My bride had already complained and I of course ignored so I had no sympathy trying to open the door, "I told you so"....
My door was locked, and I could not budge the hasp back after ever after all the hardware was taken off on the inside door handle. I had to use an open end wrench to back the bolts on the door jam holding the latch back sufficiently wide enough to get a screw driver in to bush the hasp back until with a pill from my bribe on the outside the door opened. It was not intuitive, but worked.
I now regularly check those screws.
-
in fact I found a few more loose around my door frame, all tight now.
I hope Phoenix improved upon the door frame screws since 2007 when we bought our unit new. Our door frame was mounted to the wall, a metal-to-metal assembly, with those square headed wood screws. The ends of the screws sheared off inside the metal subframe, I assume from vibration. I tapped the holes and theaded in nice strong machine screws with nice looking pan heads that use an allen wrench. I did the same to the wood screws up the side of the frame that went into other metal. 5 years later and all remains in good order. None have sheared off or even become loose.
I discussed this years ago here: http://forum.phoenixusarv.com/index.php/topic,77.0.html (http://forum.phoenixusarv.com/index.php/topic,77.0.html)