.I have an 82 C3, and I'm hoping that some of you have seen or had or heard of hogged out tumbler lock holes in the door. By hogged out, I mean the positioning lug on the tumbler having carved slightly into the door skin. Thus when you manually open the door unlocking it with a key, you will rotate the tumbler/lock barrel clockwise. When you do that you will also loose engagement of the pin inside the door that activates the lock mechanism. Has anybody made some kind of .....faceplate..?... or some insert whatnot to fix this mess. Otherwise I'd guess the fix is to sand down the door and re-glass the lock hole area and then re-holesaw it and Dremel a tumbler slot at 3:00 on the hole. What about 'shaved doors' and filling it completely in and locating the electric door locks in a 'stealth' place or have remote key-fob activated locks?


The real source problem was caused by the retainer clip on the inside of the door continually working off, and then allowing the tumbler to float around and tilt down inside and tilt outward on the outside of the door.

I just figured, hopefully that somebody made a thin repair fascia to go between the tumbler lip and the outside of the door skin. I think you can picture what I mean .............thanks ...Rich

 

Just brain storming here,.....
Ponder making a plate aprox 24 gauge about 3" x 3", with the appropriate hole/slot and glue on the inside of door panel with "Gorilla Glue".
An issue may be that the lock assembly may be too recessed afterwards.
Jus' thinkin' out loud,....

 

I was also thinking a thin SS washer on the outside with about 3/8 of a larger diameter. The reason the outside, to cover the small imperfection already caused, that way it would hide it. Though I think Gorilla Glue would be a good idea to hold the clip in place and prevent it from backing out which seems to be the re-occurring problem.

 

The problem w/ no key access is a dead battery issue. Even the new cars still have one door w/ key access. That could be overcome by bringing out the wires to the lock so you could apply power to the lock to open. Of course you'd want to put a diode in the + lead that normally powers the lock to prevent backfeeding the whole car.

 

I had thought of that. I had thought of manual hood release cables like Eckler sells, with battery leads of sufficient guage coming into the engine compartment to re-charge the battery if it went dead. Still I would like to go keyless entry for the locks, with a manual backup (solenoid type) , or cable, and maybe buttons to activate on board the car in say the gas door hidden. Or possably under the hood lip next to the windshield, or even in the mouth of the grill. Or as we have seen on some older Vettes, on the front fender above the side grill, a on-off lock-unlock, where you could open or close the solenoids. But frankley, this is back burner for a bit as a close friend has passed away yesterday and I'm going to be occupied for a while and this really becomes unimportant for now. But thanks for the ideas.