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Tue Feb 09, 2010 5:56 am

i am the proud owner of a 1972 westy. i recently am having problems with the front doors. they never really worked great however they worked. within one day of each other both doors won't open. the passenger door does open from the inside. all other handles don't do a thing. i fairly recently put on door panels. all the doors worked when i first installed them. now I'm rollin sliding door in and out style which is i guess cool enough. should i pull out the lock assemblies? clean? adjust? I'm at a loss here and don't know what to do. i would like to keep the locks because they are all keyed alike. any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks for the help, i look forward to hearing from you.

johnny b

Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:01 am

welcome john,

you'll need to remove the latch mechanisms from the doors and clean em up and re-lube them. it's a pretty common issue.
also check to make sure the linkage from the handle to the latch is working properly.

Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:08 am

Welcome John,
Do yourself a big favor and invest in one of these (shop around), digging in a door goes alot smoother with the manual. Shure sounds like the latches need cleaning and lubing and the pull rods from the inner handles may need adjusting too, clean them first and see what happens.

Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:15 am

i have pulled both door handles and door latch assemblies. the driver side door handle is broke on the inside. the passenger door handle appears to be fine. both latch assemblies are real dirty and have what i guess is 40 year old grease on them. what should i clean everything with? also, i ordered 2 new handles keyed alike to avoid the other one breaking.

Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:40 am

did you order new production handles? the ones with the black headed keys? the new ones are pretty iffy in several ways. for one thing those black head keys are a different profile so you cannot have a keyed alike bus while using them.

in my experience you are much better off using good condition used handles. you can remove the lock cylinder from your original and swap it into another replacement handle, and in the process recondition the rest of the handle mechanism. there is a small spring button beneath the finger pull, this is meant to move the finger pull back out after you apply it. this button is almost always seized, and if you are able to get it working again the handle is much nicer to operate. the lock cylinder have to be reomved anyhow to clean inside and you often need to replace another spring, the one that brings the cylinder back to centre.

for us in our shop it is a bit easier because we have a used parts inventory, but i do find that reconditioning and cobbling together keyed alike handles from used parts gives a much better result than using new replacement parts, unless the new parts are genuine old stock.

Wed Feb 10, 2010 6:28 am

the new handles i bought are both keyed alike with the black key heads. they were cheap and hopefully they will get me through till i can find some good "new/old" ones at a show or meet that i can have re-keyed to the original. do you have any advice on cleaning the latch mechanism inside the door? what type of cleaner or degreaser should i use? i have them both pulled out to service them. hopefully this will get my bus locked up and back on the road quickly. thanks everybody for your help.

Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:38 am

carb or brake cleaner in a spray can.

if they're really bad soak them for a while in paint thinner or lacquer thinner.