Montana Owners Club - Keystone Montana 5th Wheel Forum - View Single Post

OntMont · 07-02-2003, 09:27 AM

Anyone else had a problem with their locker doors, (particularly the propane lockers) coming open on the road? Ours did. Seems the suction of passing trucks was enough to pop the doors open. On examination, I found that the latch tangs only engage the edge of the locker by about 1/16th inch. With wear and corrosion, this has diminished to almost nothing. My first idea for a fix was to buy longer tangs, but these seem to be back-ordered for a long time. At my wife's suggestion, I tried another solution that has worked well. I purchased some aluminum strips that are sold for finishing the edge of tile floors. These have a chamfer on one edge and an inset on the other such that they can be neatly fastened to the locker edge to provide a much stronger surface for the tang to catch on. I used aluminum pop rivets to fasten the strips in place to avoid any corrosion between dissimilar metals. I put the aluminum strips along both the side and bottom to reinforce the edges, even though you really only need a few inches at each latch position.

OntMont
2002 Montana 3255RL
2001 Silverado 2500HD Duramax
2001 Border Collie to ride herd on us.

07-02-2003, 09:27 AM	#1
OntMont Montana Master Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Haldimand County Posts: 2,413 M.O.C. #122	Locker doors Anyone else had a problem with their locker doors, (particularly the propane lockers) coming open on the road? Ours did. Seems the suction of passing trucks was enough to pop the doors open. On examination, I found that the latch tangs only engage the edge of the locker by about 1/16th inch. With wear and corrosion, this has diminished to almost nothing. My first idea for a fix was to buy longer tangs, but these seem to be back-ordered for a long time. At my wife's suggestion, I tried another solution that has worked well. I purchased some aluminum strips that are sold for finishing the edge of tile floors. These have a chamfer on one edge and an inset on the other such that they can be neatly fastened to the locker edge to provide a much stronger surface for the tang to catch on. I used aluminum pop rivets to fasten the strips in place to avoid any corrosion between dissimilar metals. I put the aluminum strips along both the side and bottom to reinforce the edges, even though you really only need a few inches at each latch position. OntMont 2002 Montana 3255RL 2001 Silverado 2500HD Duramax 2001 Border Collie to ride herd on us.