We’ve always had a problem with the door on the Great Dale. There was no way to latch it open and it would blow around in the wind. I tried a standard RV door latch in the beginning, but the bedroom windows sick out too far. Larry tried a couple of options when he re-skinned it, but gave up in the end.
I finally had an idea and scraped up a prototype using an piece of angled metal with two holes in an existing screw hole at the top and a block of wood. The block of wood had a screw in one side to connect with the angle on the body of the RV and then I cut a diagonal slot in the wood to hold the door. Then I added a handle to make it easy to install and remove and, low and behold, it worked pretty well. It also fell apart pretty quickly.
I was going to make the final wood block in the shape of of the Great Dale, but decided it would be too big and bulky. Then I hit on the idea of making it the shape of the original 1965 Dodge Coronet, and that was perfect.
Here’s the new prototype that I whipped up in an afternoon. It’s working great! I plan on learning some carving in the off season to ad some detail before I finish it to match the screen door.
