AIRSTREAM

The orginal latch on the trailer is not exactly reliable.  Between a broken strike plate and creative weather stripping, I got kind of nervous every time we went anywhere.

So I went to Home Despot and for about 14 buks bought a dead bolt, brushed stainless steel, and a hole cutter and some big drill bits.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time reading and rereading the directions, and holding the lock next to it and generally dithering. then I drilled a pilot hole all the way through and used the hole cutter.

The first problem was that the frame around the door sticks up about 3/8ths of an inch. So that if you put the lock the proper distance from the opening ( see the template they give you) it won't sit level on the outside. So I took it down and ground off one side until it sat level.

Then, I tried to drill the hole in the door frame where the bolt would come out.  I used the size drill they suggested. However, inside the frame are flanges and braces that I had to clear out so the bolt could pass through. Mostly I used a file and a rasp. It took a while to get enough room to get the whole thing to fit in.

The face plate had dimples where the screw holes were, so to let it lie flat on the aluminum jamb, I ground them off flush. You need that face plate to keep the bolt lined up with the hole in the door.

I dithered about making the hole the the door for quite a while. I didn't want to make it any bigger than absolutely necessary. If I had made it the diameter the directions called for, the door would have been seriously weakened if not actually wrecked. So I took out the bolt and ground it down from a cylinder to a flattened lozenge shape.

There was no way to put a strike plate on the door, so the hole for the bolt had to be a perfect fit. I drilled a too small hole and then filed until the bolt would go in, and the hole was pretty clean and symmetrical. Then I Vulkemed the face plate to the outside of the trailer and assembled the whole thing.
 

Ta DA, it works, looks good and now I don't' have to worry about the door flying open on the highway, not to mention the bogey man.....

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