Door Surpise
Apr. 27th, 2016 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kevin_standleeOne of the hassles of having the rear door on the Astro jammed (as it has been since last December when something broke inside as I tried to open it in deeply sub-freezing weather in Tonopah) has been grocery shopping, as access via the side door is mildly tricky when the middle seat is installed, as we normally configure the minivan. Last weekend, when we did our large scale grocery shopping, we were mildly lazy and left some of the non-perishable items in the minivan. Yesterday, in the late morning, Lisa came in and suggested that if I could take a short break from Day Jobbe, we could finish unloading the minivan to give her room to work on the rear door. I agreed and walked out to the vehicle with her. I slid the side door open and started to reach inside for the first items.
Lisa said, "Oh, wait, it's probably easier to get things out this way," and walked around to the back of the van and opened the rear door.
I stood there dumbfounded, and then I picked Lisa off her feet in a big hug. "You fixed it!"
She had indeed repaired the rear door. She carefully was able to remove some of the rear upholstery and work a probe into the door latch, which after some trial and error (helped immensely from having been able to work on a similar door assembly at the Pick-N-Pull last weekend) opened for her. With the door actually open, removing the access panel and replacing the door handle with the one we picked up at the junkyard was pretty easy, Lisa said.
Lisa showed me the handle she removed. The mechanism is held together with a rivet at its center, and that rivet was gone. We assume that it broke off in the cold in Tonopah and is now sitting at the bottom of the inside of the door, but there's no reason to go fish it out. When the assembly fell apart, the handle could no longer lift the latch on the door.
The rear doors on the Astro now work properly, and that's a big relief to me, because we need that access in order to haul the Match Game SF kit to Portland for Westercon. Furthermore, it's much easier to use the vehicle when we have rear-door access, particularly on our long road trips like the planned trip to Kansas City for Worldcon this year.
Lisa was very pleased at how she surprised me.
Lisa said, "Oh, wait, it's probably easier to get things out this way," and walked around to the back of the van and opened the rear door.
I stood there dumbfounded, and then I picked Lisa off her feet in a big hug. "You fixed it!"
She had indeed repaired the rear door. She carefully was able to remove some of the rear upholstery and work a probe into the door latch, which after some trial and error (helped immensely from having been able to work on a similar door assembly at the Pick-N-Pull last weekend) opened for her. With the door actually open, removing the access panel and replacing the door handle with the one we picked up at the junkyard was pretty easy, Lisa said.
Lisa showed me the handle she removed. The mechanism is held together with a rivet at its center, and that rivet was gone. We assume that it broke off in the cold in Tonopah and is now sitting at the bottom of the inside of the door, but there's no reason to go fish it out. When the assembly fell apart, the handle could no longer lift the latch on the door.
The rear doors on the Astro now work properly, and that's a big relief to me, because we need that access in order to haul the Match Game SF kit to Portland for Westercon. Furthermore, it's much easier to use the vehicle when we have rear-door access, particularly on our long road trips like the planned trip to Kansas City for Worldcon this year.
Lisa was very pleased at how she surprised me.
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Date: 2016-04-27 10:58 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2016-04-28 04:30 pm (UTC)