Tourmaster Exterior Door Latch Broke

[tarheel]

I had a real scary period last evening when I stepped outside and tried to return to the coach. The outside door entrance handle seperated internally from the inside mechanism. Has anyone had that happen? Fortunately, my wife was still on the inside and was able to open the door.

After getting it open, I porceeded to take the inside handles and other parts off the door to attemt to get inside of it to see what happened and how I might fix it. After taking everything off except the windows, I found that the sides were held to the frame by velcro. I was able to pry it open enough to see everything, but wasn't sure how it worked. I finally found that the outside handle merely sets behind the bottom of the inside mechanism and I was able to put it back in place. Works fine now, but it doesn't look very substantial and I have a fear that it might happen again.

I guess I'll leave a window unlocked for a while to see how it goes. Any thoughts?

[RJ82much]

The good news is that I have a driver's side door to gain entry in an emergency.

The bad news is the key has never been able to unlock the door. My dealership even provided a master-key which won't move the mechanism either.

Great security, eh?

[RayChez1]

That is interesting Tarheel. When you say that it is held by velcro? Are you referring to the door panels? Maybe that is done that way to prevent flexing of the panels and prevents any rattles.

[tarheel]

Ray-
The padded door covering is what is held to the frame edges with velcro. It's actually a good design in case of a problem as I had. The velcro (pretty strong) was used around the perimeter and around some other touching parts. If it had not been for that or if the interior door panel was made of a hard covering, I wouldn't have been able to gain access to the mechanisms inside without doing some damage to the door.

My last coach had a hard interior finish to the door and several owners had issues with the locking mechanism and in order to fix it, they had to cut out portions of the door to gain access in order to fix it.

I just hope that my fix is a permanent one, but as I said, I'll leave a window unlocked when we leave the coach until I feel more secure with it.

Dick

[Chuck v]

I know that this is pretty old thread, but I last night had a similar issue with the latch. Since the exterior handle/latch would not actuate the door catch to release it -- I was very securely locked out. Had to jimmy driver window lock and slide that window and screen forward to climb in that way.

This morning I took the inner door panel off by removing all the handle hardware and the lower window trim...this allowed a good access to the exterior latch mounting bracket inside the door (one central nut and the bracket comes off that allows the handle mechanism to be removed from the outside.) The handle mechanism has two rods that go up to the latch proper -- one for the key lock to move the trip action clear of the latch release, and the other to trip the latch when the system is not locked. This level of indirection is needed to allow the inside lock and door release handle to work in concert with the outer mechanism. Turns out the lock is actuated by either the outer cylinder, the inner slide lever or the electric solenoid of the remote lock/unlock feature...but the latch trip is truly independent for the outer handle and the inner one.

Over the decade since my coach was made, the actuating rod has worn the holes in the plates where it engages at each end so it needed more travel. This rod has a turnbuckle in it to allow for just such length adjustments, so I just made its effective length longer such that the outer handle now trips the pawl release of the door latch in its first part of its travel, rather than in the last bit of travel (or never, as was the case last night!)

Dick, when your handle failed was the rod out of the hole in the mating plate? Some of my mechanism's rods are retained by spring clips, and others are trapped by the mounting bracket once fully assembled. Have you ever had to revisit the latch since this thread was started?

Chuck

[Chuck v]

I finally got the door handle and latch part numbers from TriMark -- just needed to send them some pictures of what mine looked like to make positive identification. The latch is part number 16511-01 and sells for $37.88 and the paddle handle for the exterior is part number 13438-04 and sells for $66.58 --Abby at customer service there was most helpful.

When these get shipped to me I will most likely just keep them on hand until I need to take the skin off the inner door again to make a further adjustment on the worn latch I have in there now and replace it rather than take a chance on an actual failure.

Chuck