Quote:
Originally Posted by Ol Blue K20
Looks great, I like cable and pulley set up.
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So did I, Dale, for about 5 minutes... then I toggled the door lock. What happened next had me scratching my head for awhile. The cable went slack and the inside handle would no longer open the door. If I removed the latch and reinstalled it, the handle would work perfectly. But as soon as you did a lock/unlock, it failed. After several tries, I finally snapped to what was going on.
There is a long slender rod with a horseshoe shaped spring at one end that is connected to the lock mechanism. In the lock position, the rod is pushed down to a slot that disengages the lever from the latch release. When you unlock the latch, the horseshoe spring is supposed to retract the long slender rod to a position that engages the release lever. What was happening was that the cable was unable to assist with returning the lever fully. Kinda like trying to push a chain across the floor.
So, my fix was to add an extension spring to the lever to force it to retract fully. I'm guessing that in the original configuration, the weight of the handle along with a solid connecting rod were what forced the lever to retract enough. Naturally, I only had one spring in my junk box that was remotely close to what I needed. McMaster-Carr has some that may work, but I need to do some deeper digging. Springs tend to resist modification so I'd like to get as close as I can right off the bat.