Inside Door Latch

The top half of the door on our 2619 does not fit tightly when closed. In order to seal the top half of the door and to provide additional safety while in the TM, I installed an additional "latch" similar to the one the TM people developed to hold the two halfs of the door together.

The attached picture shows the latch on the inside near the top right of the door. I used a 1/4 X 2 inch carriage bolt (20 threads per inch) and a lock nut. The spacer under the latch was made out of some dogwood (it is 1/4 inch thick) I had, and the latch itself was made out of some white oak (it is also 1/4 inch thick). I drilled a 1/4 hole through the door and installed the 1/4 inch carriage bolt. The head on the carriage bolt is such that it locks the bolt to keep it from turning.

This new arrangement seals the upper half of the door and give us a sense of greater safety. It would be very difficult to force the top half of the door open--likewise, if the TM has not been leveled properly, it will keep the door from coming open during the middle of the night while you are sleeping.

My next door project is to install a dead bolt lock in the top half of the door so we can lock the top half of the door, as well as, the bottom half when we go off and leave our TM. Does anyone have a good, easy solution to accomplish this?

A couple of years ago I installed a cabinet lock on the upper door of our TM trailer so that we could lock the upper door (from the outside) as well as lock the door knob. This is one of the previous discussions about "dead bolts:"

http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...=7852#post7852

The photos unfortunately disappeared from these messages on the old TM website when it transitioned to this new one. I'll put up a couple of photos of my cabinet lock tomorrow if you wish to see them.

Larry -

After reading your post, I've ordered a C8060 to install on my TM. I would appreciate your posting a couple of photos to see how you installed the cabinet lock.

Thank you for your response.

Russ

Here are some photos of the cabinet lock I installed on my TM's upper door. The first one was taken from the outside view and the second from the inside. I attached an aluminum strike plate to the inside door jamb with glue so that the rotating latch plate would not have to bear on the thin sheet metal of the jamb.

This cabinet lock functions as a single dead bolt lock. That is, you can't lock the upper door when you're inside the TM. I intend to remedy this by installing a slide bolt just above the cabinet lock in the near future.

Larry -

Thanks for the pics. It gives me some idea about the placement and the need for the strike plate. I'm going to attempt to duplicate what you have done as soon as I receive my cam lock via UPS.

Thanks for the help.

Russ

I,am curious why the factory did not install the dead bolt lock on the upper half of the door, and door handle with the push button lock on the bottom half? seems to me this would offer much more security, while the unit is occupied or not.