Winter has been mild in North Carolina, though cold enough in the deep winter months to keep me out of the garage. March usually is the transition month — a month of teasing warmth and, when cold, a month of yearning for spring. This March has been warm. So warm, in fact, that this weekend I opened the front door of the garage to let air and sun in. This is what the car looked like on 11 March, just before the left door handle was put into place.
Please excuse the mess. Winter blows leaves through the cracks beneath a side door, but the rest of the disarray is my fault. I am always amazed to see pictures of other fellows’ neat and tidy workspaces. I’ve never been that organized, and I have kids who use the garage and the tools as well.
This entry might be a little too detailed for most folks, but I found that I spent an inordinate amount of time just figuring out how the door lock/latch mechanism works. I initially thought that some parts had been pilfered, since there seemed to be too much “air” in the middle of the section covered by the can-like “retaining case.” There is a plunger-like piece that slides freely in the rear section of thetumbler piece, and it slides freely when the car is locked, and is held in place when unlocked, so that the plunger is forced out the back end of the retaining case to activate the latch mechanism in the door.
I got a new retaining case from XKs Unlimited. The cases are sided, and so this one fits only the left side. (A tab is labeled “LH” for “left hand.”) The retaining case frequently will fail at the rear end, as mine had. The part was virtually identical to the original, except for the fact that excess metal from the casting had not been trimmed off. This mainly was an issue for the hole at the rear (pictured). Ten minutes of sanding with some 220-grit sandpaper made everything clean and correct. Fit was not good on a small tab that slides into a slot on the door handle, but this was a matter of a little more sanding to bring the tab down to size.
Neither of these were big issues. It is, of course, much better to have too much metal than too little.
This lock and the one on the right side door had apparently been lubricated with oils and perhaps a little grease. They were both caked with grime. I took everything apart and soaked everything in kerosene (aka “paraffin”) and scrubbed with an old toothbrush. This is the usual drill I go through with parts, as I don’t have a fancy parts washer. I’ve decided to use a dry graphite lubricant on the locks.
For the most part, the pictures to the right and their “tooltip” captions, which you get when you mouse-over the pictures, tell the story in excruciating detail. The pictures themselves are probably the most useful of the explanations. Nothing in the disassembly or reassembly requires any special tools, just a needlenose pliers, a couple of screw drivers, and a fairly strong couple of fingers. The springs are not tremendously hard to compress, so you can easily squeeze the parts with one hand.
How the mechanism works perhaps becomes apparent from the pictures. The important piece that manages the locking is the small linkage piece that slips into the slot at the rear of the retaining clip. When the door is locked, this part offsets the plunger inside the tumbler and allows the plunger to slip between the fork-like sides of that section of the lock tumbler. The seventh picture from the top shows this linkage piece in place; the ninth and tenth pictures show the plunger functioning in unlocked and locked settings.
One thing I did that might be an addition, though a small one, was to place rubber seals between the door handle and the two points it touches the body. I don’t have any record of a seal in that position when we disassembled the car, but that doesn’t mean that the original cars wouldn’t have had seals. I cut mine out of rubber from a car inner tube. Worked nicely.
I’ve finished installing the chrome I got back from Ricardo.
More than you ever wanted to know about locking mechanisms
New “retaining case.” I bought a new retaining case from XKs Unlimited, pictured on the left (of course). On the right is the torn off rear section of the original case, with the inside portion of the case visible. See the excess metal on the new casting. I had some sanding to do.Exploded lock/latch mechanism. This is what the parts look like, more or less as they fit together. Above the central line-up is a small brass pin to set the lock tumbler in place. Below the line-up are a small compressed spring (for key lock rotation) and a washer that sits between the small spring and the large extended spring (for the latch push button). The right-most item below the line-up is the linkage setup for the lock. This slips into the retaining case.Lock tumbler and the latch plunger. Vocabulary fails me, but I think I got the tumbler named right. The “plunger” slips into the slotted rear section of the tumbler. This part confused me, since I didn’t see how the plunger would be fixed in place to push the latching mechanism inside the door. It works, trust me.Lock tumbler and the latch plunger. Vocabulary fails me, but I think I got the tumbler named right. The “plunger” slips into the slotted rear section of the tumbler. This part confused me, since I didn’t see how the plunger would be fixed in place to push the latching mechanism inside the door. It works, trust me.Brass pin lock the tumbler in place The picture is a bit out-of-focus, but the brass pin is shown extending from the hole into which it slides. When you take your lock apart, this hole will likely be obscured by the general gunk of the part. After cleaning, the purpose of the hole is clear. This was an easy slide into place, just a couple of taps did it.Washer and spring inserted. A special washer fits onto the chromed cylinder and then the spring that provides the resistance for the push button on the handle fits over the cylinder end. Pretty straight-forward.Lock linkage in place. In order to get the spring-tumbler-cylinder assembly into place, you have to stick the lock linkage into place. It fits in the slot at the read of the retaining case, and you sinply position it so that the hole into which the plunger fits is 100 percent clear. That is the unlocked position. The picture is shows the correct position. By the way, the tab with the two holes shows the “LH” meaning left hand, and the tab opposite that was the one I had to sand to fit the slot on the handle.The keylock assembly reassembled. Compress the spring into the retaining case with the plunger extended, so that it fits through the hole at the rear of the case. Then take the bolt/nut and screw it into the end of the plunger, until the nut on the bolt fits against the rear of the retaining case. The nut can be adjusted so that the bolt end of the plunger hits the paddle-like part of the door latch. This is a minor adjustment that you do after the door handle is in place.The push pressed in UNLOCKED position.Notice that the plunger is extending from the end of the retaining case. Also notice the position of the lever at the side of the case — part of the lock linkage.The push pressed in LOCKED position. Contrast this picture with the one above. Note that the plunger remains in its “unpushed” position. This is because the plunger slips between the forks of the lock tumbler casing. When the push is pressed, the plunger will not activate the latch mechanism.Lock fitted into door handle. This picture shows the latch tab in unlocked position. Really the only two things holding the retaining case in place are the two small machine screws.Original door hardware. The original hardware for the lock-latch mechanism and for affixing the door handle. The small screws are 4-40’s, probably 1/4-inch. They attach the retaining case to the door handle. I replaced them with 3/8-inch lengths. The door studs are 10-32s, with a black anodize washer (I originally thought it might be rubber). These were rust-bound. On the original, the threaded stud would be screwed into the door handle and then fitted to the door panel. I just used a number 10 machine screw with a nut screwed on to tighten everything up. It worked nicely.Door hole clean-up. I cleaned up the holes for the door fitting with a drill bit.Rubber seals. Rubber from an old tire tube served as raw material for the rubber seals the fit between the door panel and the door handle. I do not know if there was such a seal on the original, but it seems like a good idea to put them in place. There should be less chance of leakage and the paintwork is protected. You can see my paper templates in the baggie, too. I cut the rubber a generously, since I wanted to trim it to fit exactly.Trimming the rubber seal. This was easy. Just press the handle against the seal, and outline it with a ballpoint pen. Remove. Trim to the line. Done.External view of the installed handle. Nice to see it in place!Inside view of the installed handle and lock. The (rusty) clip hold the linkage in unlocked position, and you can see the 10-32 screw with nut that hold the door handle in place. This is a good clean installation. The clip, despite its rust, is sound. Besides, I coated it with grease to inhibit further corrosion.
Quite a while ago, I sent off some badly pitted taillights and some merely OK exterior door handles to Ricardo Delatorre, the owner of The Best Chrome in San Martin, California. I sent them off in December 2004, and I let Ricardo know that I wasn’t in any hurry. The chrome pieces came back in February, after Ricardo attempted repair of the originals without success. He acquired different taillights and chromed them up, abandoning the ones I sent to him as lost to the scrap heap. (May they rest in peace until they are remelted and made into something useful!)
I am delighted with the newly chromed parts. As a matter of fact, they drew praises from the rest of the family, too, as I unpacked the parts from the box. I ran out to the garage minutes after unpacking the taillights to fetch the rest of the assemblies. I had the taillights on, fully tested, before the sun went went down that Saturday.
The taillight assembly went in quite easily. I only had to retap the holes in the straps on the body to do the preparation at this point, everything else having been completed. I loosely fit the rubber seal onto the taillight assembly and then plugged in the bullet connectors. After loosely fitting the chrome to the body, I positioned the rubber seal. I found that using a razor knife tip (without pressing too hard, of course) made it possible to pull the rubber into place. A little pressure applied to the taillight chrome held the rubber seal in position while I tightened the screws and got the taillight to fit snugly. I was actually a bit surprised that they fit so well, since I had heard that such fittings need often need to be ground when trial testing before plating.
A test of the lights, and that was it!
The door handles, of course, are a bit more challenging to fit together. When we disassembled the car in 2002, we discovered that the left side lock had a broken “retaining case” — the part that surrounds the spring-loaded plunger behind the locking mechanism. I’ve ordered a new one of those. (They are not interchangeable from side to side, by the way). The right door handle went in place after I took apart the entire lock and cleaned the accumulated gunk.
I resisted the urge to lubricate the lock with oil or grease. It seems to me that graphite is a better choice. I recall from cold winters in Minnesota that liquid (or gel) lubricants can get formidably stiff in very cold weather. I hope this car will be spared from that beastly cold.
It took me a while to actually see how the entire mechanism works, since when I first looked at it I suspected that the part might have been cannibalized. There was, it seemed to me, too much “air” in the middle of the part, between the rear end of the lock tumbler and the loosely fitted plunger. I’ll taken some pictures when I reassemble the left side lock, so that others might not be confused. At any rate, the right side door handle went on shortly after the rechromed parts came back to Rougemont, and like the taillights, it is beautiful to see in its final place.
The Best Chrome did very good work for me, and though the parts were in Ricardo’s hands for a good long while, I told him that I wasn’t pressed for time. So I couldn’t expect a fast turn around. I still have some chrome that probably needs to be done, but I don’t know the timetable for that right now. Mainly I have bumpers that need attention, and I’m planning on doing a lot of the preparation here in Rougemont. When I get to the point of sending off the parts for plating, Ricardo will be in mind. I just wish he was on my end of the country!
Ricardo’s contact information:
Ricardo Delatorre
The Best Chrome
13165 Monterey Road
San Martin, California 95046
tumbler piece, and it slides freely when the car is locked, and is held in place when unlocked, so that the plunger is forced out the back end of the retaining case to activate the latch mechanism in the door.
