Monday, April 9, 2007

Four candles... 'andles for forks

The door handles and locks were all crudely painted over when I got her. I removed the latch mechanisms to clean them up and fit new lock barrels. The latches appear to have some kind of plating (possibly nickel?) - by the time I'd got them cleaned up, the plating was more or less gone, so I gave the outside faces a couple of coats of grey primer to prevent further corrosion.

If you have the current key, then removing the barrels is simple. They are held in by a sprung pin, and there is an access hole in the lock to push the pin back and withdraw the barrel. For the door latches, the pin aligns with the access hole when the key is in the locked position. Note that on this particular latch, an extra hole had been drilled in the 12 o'clock position - presumably by someone trying to pop the barrel without having the correct key. While I was at it, I disassembled the steering column surround and changed the ignition switch barrel too - that one aligns in the OFF position and does not need to be turned with the key in order to remove it.

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