Hi

A little safety warning for those of you with original TD door lock

hardware on your replicas.

Recently I got into my BCW and noticed that I was having trouble locking

the driver door lock.   It was pitch black and I was an hour from home.

After a couple minutes of trying, I got the lock to click shut and then

thinking nothing more of it drove away. A half a mile down the road, as I

was making a turn, the lock broke and the door flung open. Fortunately I

was going slowly so my door didn’t get damaged. If I had been traveling

at any significant speed, I would have had my door ripped off by the

wind.

Upon closer inspection I found that the pot metal lock had completely

disintegrated. Apparently after thousands of openings and closings, and

the vibrations of 57k miles, it just gave out. I think the fact that my

doors had recently gone slightly out of alignment probably had not

helped matter and further strained the worn lock.

Given what can happen if our doors fling open on the highway, I know

that I am going to inspect my locks regularly from now on and I hope that

you will too.   

Remove the interior chrome cover plate and look for any stress cracks in

the pot metal lock body. Replace the lock immediately if there are

cracks. Fix any door alignment problems asap. Lastly if you notice any

problem getting your lock to shut normally, stop and carefully examine it.

Do not ignore any possible warning signs that the lock is about to fail as I

did.

I hope that this will keep you and you cars out of danger.

Cheers,

Brian