Just had to replace a fairly standard bathroom door mortise latch mechanism (with inbuilt locking bolt).
The main bolt had ceased retracting far enough to allow the door to open easily. First thought was to open it up and see if I could effect a repair. Sadly the case was securely riveted together and opening it was too destructive to allow its re-use. Annoying, as once I got it open I found that I could repair it.
Bought a new bathroom latch only to find that once mounted, the axes of the shaft was about a quarter of an inch higher than the old lock which would have left exposed screw holes on the outside of the door once I had moved the door handles & plates up.
For the sake of appearances and to avoid chiselling the mortice hole recess I ordered the same brand/type of lock on-line expecting that all the screw holes would line up.
Annoyingly, despite being the same brand/type the mismatch was even worse with this replacement and I ended up having to chisel out the mortice and lengthen the recess in the door edge to make the first latch fit. So now I have an unsightly recess in the door edge to fill in. :-(
Why can’t makers keep things like this constant? To be fair, the makers of the second lock had improved the design of the lock (no longer riveted together and has a double sided cam so that I can flip it when it wears again) but there was no need to moved the axes of the bolts relative to the rest of the lock. Grrrr.
</rant>
Tim