But, then again . . . . .

By TrikinDave

Monday Almost Mono Challenge.

It was a frustrating day.
The latch on the living room door stopped working due to a broken spring, so I went out to buy a replacement mechanism. Same brand, same model, ten years apart; the fixings are in slightly different places (several millimetres different), the handle has moved by about five mm and the latch bolt has moved by one. Now, after a bit of refitting, the door won't stay shut until I take a file to the mortice plate.

I took the new one apart thinking that I could use it for spare parts to repair the old one and save a lot of messing about. No chance, the innards are built to a new design - probably so that they could shave a penny off the component cost of the thing. Unfortunately, Yale seem to have cornered the market as far as this piece of hardware is concerned so I can't even vent my frustration by going to a different manufacturer. Strangely, in the 35 years that we've lived in this house, the only ones to have failed are of the modern variety; there are plenty of old ones still working, fitted when the house was built over 130 years ago.

When I took the cover off this, all its bits went "Boing." I put them back in again but it didn't work properly so, in the (approximate) words of Eric Morecombe, "There are all the right bits but not necessarily in the right order." It doesn't particularly matter as we don't need the full functionality, most of the insides ended up in the bin.
I'll finish the job tomorrow.

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