[chockwald]

Recently, when visiting Tom McCloud at his home in Mesa, AZ he noticed the bushing on the door latch post was worn, and gave me a replacement. Being extremely naive, I thought this would be a 5 minute job, and half of that would be finding the right torque socket...LOL!!! My first issue was there was a large washer, or spacer between the bushing, and the threads, that I could not slip off past the threads to remove the bad bushing (pictures to follow). I tried freezing the post and washer to see if one would shrink more than the other, and no luck. Then I tried heating it up, and still no luck. Of course, heating one and cooling the other won't work because there is continual contact between both, so the cold, and/or heat transfers to the other. My third solution was to call Tom, because he has recently replaced this same bushing, and has an almost exact copy of what I have.....almost is the important word here. His post has/had no washers, or spacers. So comes the 4th option, put the thing in a vice, and use my hack saw to cut the washer off. Took about 10 minutes, but I got it off. I then put on the new bushing, replaced the damaged washer with one that does not fit quite so snuggly, and reinstalled everything. The door closes, but it is about 1/4" shy of closing flush. The mechanism seems to be working properly, and in fact it was closing almost flush, even with the damaged bushing, just before I removed the post, and bad bushing. The hole that the post mounts through does not allow for much lateral, or up and down adjustment, so I am at a total impass after spending the better part of 2 hours on this "5 minute" job. Now it is difficult to turn the dead bolts.

One additional thing, the door is not exposed to the sun right now, and is/was in the shade when I was working on the post.

Any thoughts any of you might have would be greatly appreciated. When I get back home in a couple of hours I'll take pictures and post them.