jammed patio door lock

[noos999]

I have sliding patio doors and the lock has jammed. The locking mechanism has a black plastic lever. Normally to unlock the doot, one turns the key clockwise and slides the black lever downwards. The key does turn and it is possible to move the lever into the down postion, although the action seems stiffer than normal. However, the door will not budge. Any idea how to proceed?

thanks

Julian

[Paul R]

Look at your Home Insurance policies - I had to have my Patio Doors replaced to fix a similar problem - as no one could repair the old mechanism. Insurance company paid for replacing the whole patio doors. But if they are 'structural' make sure the installers are competent - or else you might end up with a year of agro to eventually make all the repairs from dropping the first floor structure when replacing the ground floor patio door!

Paul R

[noos999]

have a better policy than me! However, I have managed to unjam the door. This is what I did, in case anyone else runs into the same problem. I unscrewed the metal handles. This revealed a round hole, through which I could see that two metal plates were trying to slide relative to each other when the black plastic lever was operated. I squirted WD40 into the hole. I took the black plastic lever off the spindle, and turned the spindle, which has a square cross-section, with a spanner. This unstuck the mechanism and it all works fine now..

Julian

[The Natural Philosopher]

Reminds me of the time my clutch plate rusted onto the flywheel in me old commer Highwayman 'You just start it in second gear, drive up the road, and stamp on the clutch and the brakes'

It worked!

[Stuart Noble]

I freed my neighbour's back door yeterday. It seems to be the upward/downward thrust of the handle that gets jammed rather than the lock itself, which is a pretty simple mechanism compared to the 3 or 4 latches that engage with the upward thrust. Turns out the door had actually been unlocked all winter, which kind of threw me :-)