Well, the handle mystery deepens. Joel sent me an ETKA printout showing
that my 84 should not have a handle there. "Possibly put on by the PO,"
he mused. Had to be mounted to the cardboard, was the theory, because
the door should not have a place to mount it.

But it does, and it's the stock handle that Jake, I believe it was,
posted a link to a picture of yesterday. I took the inner door cover off
to adjust the bowden thingy and in the process, found that the handle is
mounted to a square boss that is bolted to the door metal. So the ETKA
is wrong, simply put.

Sudhir wondered if maybe that handle is there to aid in closing the
door. Since the door's final motion in closing is to move inward, and we
want the rear end of the door to come in far enough that the latch
catches, the handle, it turns out does exactly that. I had previously
been closing the door by sliding it forward with so much force that
momentum caused it to bang into place. But when inside, the handle can
be used to tug the door inward for the final latch. When outside,
putting inward pressure on the rear of the door aids the latching
process, too.

The "thump" made when the door goes into its final latched position is
still louder than I'd like in an early morning campground, to be polite,
even with sound damping material applied to the door's skin inside, but
using the handle or pushing on the door help a lot.

--

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 6/15/2007 9:32 AM neil wrote: