Sigh…

Next week’s project is getting the doors latches operational again…

Sigh…. that did happen (on one side) – but precious little else did.

Things started off well. I was able to clean and install the door latch mechanism on the passenger side:

As well as the striker:

After a bit of striker adjustment, I was really happy with how the door sat while it was closed:

The door opened and closed really nicely as well. Things were looking up so I decided to install the door lock next:

You wouldn’t think that the elapsed time between the two pictures would be significant, but you’d be as wrong as I was in thinking installing the door lock would be quick.

I’m not sure if the issue was paint/primer build up or the reproduction door skin, but the hole the lock inserts into took well over an hour of very careful filing before the mechanism would fit.

However, once it did fit, I was able to test the mechanism and it worked great. Things were finally looking up!

I next took out my shiny new door handles:

And spread all of their 3,524 undocumented parts out on my work bench:

And the day went promptly down hill. I’m accustomed to reproduction parts being slightly different than the originals, but the pivot mechanisms for the new door handles were nothing like the old ones:

You can see in the image above that the old pivot mechanism on the right angles down while the new ones on the left angle up.

The door handles that I purchased were very specifically for 69-70 Mustangs and the label on the box “confirmed” that I had received the right parts:

I tried for at least two hours to get them to fit before I gave up. I couldn’t even use the old pivots with the new handles due to the fastener location being different between the two:

Finally, I gave up in disgust and just installed the old handle in an attempt to make sure that the door latch mechanism completely worked:

I’m thankful to report that the door is now fully functional. Both locking mechanisms and both door latches work and the door closes crisply without requiring much effort.

However, the door handle is not quite up to spec with the rest of the car:

After I was finished for the day, I went up to my office and got in touch with cjponyparts. Looking at the pictures on their site, I was either sent the wrong part or something had drastically changed in the product since the photo was taken.

I was told that “this was definitely a mis-labeled part” and promptly sent a return shipping label. I was also promised that they’d let me know as soon as they confirmed that they had the right parts on the shelf and had sent them to me. So far… no word.

#Sigh

I was rather unmotivated at that point so I decided to begin some early work on Shop 5.0. One of the things that I wanted to fix with 5.0 is the fact that all of my batteries and chargers were out in the open and not locked up:

One of the other “wants” of 5.0 is not to spend a lot of money so to fix the battery problem I ended up using the free tool box I dug out of a dumpster and restored earlier this year:

The only expense was the price of a lock that I purchased and installed onto the door:

Shop 5.0 is a Christmas break project, but getting this small piece out of the way at least made me feel as though I accomplished something of value this week.