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Bathroom door latch problems
The bathroom latch on our E21 has been giving us problems since it was new. I would occasionally jam and the striker wouldn't fully extend. Sometimes this would lead to the door opening while traveling. I attempted to adjust the striker plate and the lockset multiple times, and I discovered that the lock was shifting in the door and would jam if it got close to the edge of the hole in the door. Is this happening to anyone else? or is it just me?
So I've taken the thing apart to get a better idea of what is happening. Escape drills three mounting holes in the door to mount the latch, and all the holes are way bigger than they need to be. They hang the door, then install the lockset and the inner and outer sides of the lockset are held to each other with a pair of screws. Since the holes are substantially oversize, the lockset can move around about 1/4 inch in any direction on the surface of the door. It is only held in place by cracking down the screws and relying on friction. This is handy if there are variations in how the door is hung, and they need to shift the lockset, but it sucks for longevity because that lockset is eventually going to shift in the hole and create the above problems.
My solution has two parts. For the lockset, I created a sleeve with a flange on it. The flange slides over the back of the front part of the lockset (the outside). The holes in the flange force the sleeve into position coaxially with the plunger button so that it cannot move. The outside of the sleeve diameter matches the oversize hole so that the lockset cannot shift in the hole. The bottom of the sleeve slides over a short sleeve that protrudes from the inner half of the lockset (the side in the bath). When installed on the door, the entire plunger button is enclosed in the sleeve so it cannot be pinched in the door, and the inner and outer lockset halves are locked to each other in a solid unit and can't shift out of alignment with each other. This all seems to work great, and the lock is solid in the door and cannot move.
The second part of the solution was to remake the striker plate. I added a number of indexed stackable shims that allow the distance from the plate to the lockset to be optimized. Since the lockset won't move, it can be close to the striker and provide more positive locking. To eliminate the door wobble some people have, I added a small plunger foot on a spring that protrudes from the bottom of the striker plate. When the door is open, this sticks out about 1cm. When the door closes, it depresses the plunger foot which exerts a small force outward on the door. This keeps the door from oscillating when it closes, eliminating the tendency of the door to rattle.
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