Anybody ever break a top latch?

666 Views 5 Replies 3 Participants Last post by herb101, Oct 21, 2010

herb101

Discussion Starter · Oct 11, 2010

..or am I a special case?

The passenger side front top latch now free-spins instead of latching when activated manually. May have something to do with the previous owners molestation of the assembly, but either way - it's broken. Now I need to pull to top off (again) and strip down the windsheild header (again) to see how painfull this is going to be.

The PO's fix for what I assume is a stripped allen key was to weld an 11mm hex nut atop the allen port and enlarge the header hole by drilling/bending the header steel. My guess is that the heating from the welding may have jacked-up the heat treat and allowed me to twist off something I should not have been able to. Either that or I must cut out the Wheaties stacking...

Herb

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Lighthouse

· #2 · Oct 13, 2010

post mortem

Herb,

hope you'll have a chance to post some pictures of the broken latch. Maybe it's fixable, or at least we may be able to figure out how it died and know exactly what to blame a brutal previous owner for...

-Klaus

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Lighthouse

· #4 · Oct 21, 2010

Rebuilding stripped latch

herb101 said:
I can't see that a rebuild of the latch is possible or likely, so it looks like I need to source a replacement passenger side latch.

Herb,

hope you can find a used latch somewhere. It would be a pain to rebuild, but almost anything is possible...
(I'm originally a nuclear physicist, and we silly guys think we can do almost anything - at least when it comes to technology...

)
Thus, I would rather see you find one elsewhere, but I'm sure we can turn a bent one of mine into a parts donor for your stripped one.

-Klaus

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