Hi Jonathan,

Food for thought you have given me. Mrs Squirrel and I have always found
the mighty effort needed to close the sliding door, and the mighty noise
it emits when slammed, to be unpleasant. I briefly tried closing the
door using the rear handle (as you describe) a couple times but it
didn't seem to work well. May be a matter of practice, or maybe you and
the others are right and I need to give this door a serious cleaning. I
was planning to remove the interior panel anyway, to tighten the linkage
so it opens from inside more easily, and apply sound-damping material to
the skin. I reckon now's a good time for some maintenance.

Jake has been telling me that he likes a lanolin-based lubricant called
"Fluid Film," manufactured by the Eureka Chemical Company for slider
application. Now, I can't tell if he's in fact named the Very Best
lubricant for the sliders, or just setting me on a snipe hunt. At any
rate it reportedly smells like a raw wool sweater. So. Gross.

What else have listees found to work good?

--

Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
71 Type 2: the Wonderbus
84 Westfalia: Mellow Yellow ("The Electrical Banana")
74 Utility Trailer. Ladybug Trailer, Inc., San Juan Capistrano
KG6RCR

On 6/14/2007 1:15 PM Jonathan Poole wrote:

> In my experience the rear handle works great in it's stock (I
> think?) horizontal orientation.  The way that I use it is to slide the door
> into the almost closed position and then grab the rear handle and gently
> pull the door inwards (towards the fridge) to close it.  This way you are
> not slamming the door which is nice when camping with others etc.  It is
> very hard to ease the door closed from the inside with the front handle
> only.
>
> Like others have said, if you can ease the door closed by pulling it in
> then
> you need to lube/clean the tracks etc.  Don't overlook the roller that runs
> in the track at the bottom of the door (at least on the early models).  I
> found that removing that roller and cleaning/greasing it made a big
> difference on my sliding door.  You may need to remove the door to pop the
> roller off which is an easy thing to do.  I like to keep 5 gallon
> buckets or
> such around for props so that I don't have to lower the door all the way to
> the ground immediately as an end is disconnected from the van.
>
> Jonathan Poole
> '82 AC Westy
>