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[Wrench]

On the trip home from the dealer the outside kitchen door (a panel about 4 ½ feet by 5 feet) located near the rear passenger’s side of the coach came open at highway speed. After a good solid slam the rest of the trip completed uneventfully. Next trip, before departure, the door was slammed solidly and verified by shaking and pulling. Down the road a bit it came open again. The next time it happened the door was Gorilla taped so that it cannot come open until we get home.

The latch on the kitchen door is the same as all of the other outside compartments, none of which have opened up on the road. The latch appeared to be working as designed, which is a spring loaded tongue that goes into a receiving bracket mounted to the coach. My guess is due to the size of the panel it gets a lot of wind buffeting and this movement and vibration cause the spring loaded tongue to work its way back enough to open the latch.

I could have gone to the dealer at this point but did not. My thinking was that this door needs a solid, positive locking mechanism and that the dealer and the manufacturer would insist upon fixing the existing latch. This would all take time and aggravation to resolve in the best case.

For about $15 from Amazon I purchased a locking t-handle latch, the kind you see on equipment boxes on trucks. With just a little trimming this fit in the existing opening in the door and the mounting screws fitted up well enough. There is not a lot of stress on the screws, the lip of the new latch is what the door pulls against. A new receiving bracket was fabricated out of 3/16” steel plate and was mounted to the coach with Grade 5 hardware, replacing the existing bracket that was already showing signs of deforming and was mounted to the coach with three of the self-drilling self-tapping sheet metal screws you see so many of in motorhomes.

From the outside the new latch was a shiny polished stainless steel and since the shape of the new latch was not an exact match for the old one some of the door panel was the wrong color. The old latch was taken to the local automotive paint store, the paint color was matched, and a small quantity of paint was obtained along with some acid etch primer for the stainless steel parts. This was all spray painted, and while not up to professional standards, looks good enough to my untrained eye.

As of several thousand miles later the door problem seems to be solved.