With the help (donor parts) of several Patrollers out there I have successfully repaired my rear door latch. I figured I would offer a few observations on the repair as had I known before I may have avoided braking mine in the first place.
First- I am referring to part number 22 on the attached diagram.
This rear gate latch has a brass latch that is operated by a brass fulcrum. (visible lifter ring). Blue Circle shows the latch, lifter ring is directly above in this
Why did I circle the latch.. Well, I broke it by trying to pry it out of the mechanism itself. Note that the little piece to the right is the lift tab that the ring works against to pull up the latch form the door striker.
You can see what the latch should look like on the by observing the arrow pointing to what it should look like in this picture from the part Zed sent to me.
The latch itself appears to be brass with a steel plunger rod that uses a spring to push the latch back down. Since the casing supporting the is also steel, the pin, the spring, and the casing rust together to impact the operation of the latch.
There are two different latch assemblies, one is steel and one is anodized. I imagine the steel version will also rust more completely over time.
Disassemble the unit by removing the cotter pin allowing the Pull to be removed. Once removed you will see the pull was held in by two tabs. Bend those outward to allow the latch clearance to come out the bottom. Doing this will preserve the integrity of the harness that is holding the whole thing together.
The unit I took parts from for my repair had been drilled out and replaced with rivets. This allowed too much play in the latch and did not work properly.
This brings me to removal of the latch mechanism to begin with. These are typically rusted in place. Phillips machine head bolt in front, nuts soldered to the back side. I snapped my bolts with an impact wrench. Nuts stayed in place (please note the rust blob of pin and chassis is pointed to with blue arrow)
I cleaned up each part, put a new spring in and soldered new nuts to the back for a smooth operating latch.
I do have a non working latch assembly (trying to remove rust as we speak) and the associated parts from the "donor" unit shone above as "parts'. Message me if interested in either.
Hope this helps.
Rear door latch
- Administrator
- Posts: 7558
- Joined: Thu Oct 04, 2012 10:42 am
- Location: Temecula, CA
- Has thanked: 7085 times
- Been thanked: 2359 times
- Contact: