Middle side door fix?

Hello all,
I have a malfunctioning side middle door latching mechanism on my '62 Econoline. I found a spare part that looks the same as the one in the door now and I'm trying to swap them out but I don't know how to remove the the shafts that the handles mount to. Here are pictures of what I'm talking about.


Any help is appreciated!

Are you talking about the rods that engage with the body at the top and bottom?

The outer handle is removed with a couple of screws. The rods have small barbed shafts that connect with a keeper on the latch arms. You slide the keepers off the arms after lifting their own small keeper that indexes in a hole in the arm. It's simpler than it sounds, but the most important thing is to not let the upper rod fall down into the door! Put some tape on the protruding part of the rod so it can't fall into the door frame.

Thanks for the walk through Otto. So yep, there it was, an allen bolt on the bottom side of the handle and off it came.

I was able to find some other doors with the handles and latching/locking mech in tact and good working order.

These handles did have screws on the handles on the inside and outside. Inside came right off but outside had some extra screws. I had to disect that one to remove it.




I still don't see how the square shaft and the round one come off. I have another latching mech that I think came off the rear door that looks like it was cut on the square side and the round side was beaten with a punch or something?

Hmmm, you got some odd stuff going on there. I see an inside handle on the outside of the door, good that you got that off.

On my van, the square shaft is part of the outside handle; it indexes into the latch. Yours looks like it's swedged in there by some punch marks. Usually the latches aren't serviceable with individual parts, but if you have extras it may call for some creativity to solve your issue.

Do I see a tack weld on the end of the square shaft? You may be able to drill the square shaft out and remove it.

So I was able to beat out the square shaft from the spare unit I had. Now it seems I need to maybe spot weld the square "hole" part to the cam it runs through because there is some play in their movement together. I'm thinking now that this is the original part that was in the van. The current one I have in there is working correctly  but the key does not engage anything to keep the handle from opening, meaning key turns but no "click" and it does not lock. I will remove that unit and see what's happening in there on a fresh day.
From looking in the shop manual, the picture shows that the outside handle will remove the square shaft from the unit and the round shaft stays put for the inside handle.

I think my confusion was that I was working with a rear door unit which has no round shaft because there is no inside handle. Does that sound correct?

Hey Otto, I didn't see your reply until I just put together that last reply. I agree, some odd stuff for sure. As I go through all the boxes of parts that came with the van, I can see from the paint remnants what was removed compared to what's on there now. I currently have the new set of doors I just got, with the working unit soaked in PB blaster with hopes I will be able to remove the outside handle w/square shaft and swap that unit to the door that's on my van now until I get the window doors ready for install.
I just don't know if I'll be able to remove the the faulty unit from the door that is on the van now. May have to cut it off. Not a big deal since its not working anyway. Thanks for your feedback!

So I made some more progress today. I removed the working but NOT locking unit from my rear door. There is a locking mechanism on it and it does move up and down as it should and click into the lock position but it has no help getting there. Here it is next to the old original one.

I also removed the lock cylinder and comparing it to what I saw in the side door, which locks properly but does not function properly, it seems I need a different part on the end of the cylinder than what I have. Here is the rear door lock cylinder.

You can see on the drawling what the correct part looks like on the back end of the cylinder.

I looked through the extra parts and cant find anything like it. So are these parts interchangeable between the cylinders? Any ideas where to find them? The other set of doors I just got does not have a cylinder. Learning as I go. I did see on a different forum where a guy was dealing with the same thing a few months ago. I think I'll go over there and show him what I found out.

It looks like the one on the left is missing the shaft, spring and part that holds it closed. did you look in the bottom of the door for the missing parts? Maybe shaft broke and parts dropped inside.

Hi Russell,
   Yes there are a few parts missing from that one on the left. I was able to locate a source for the correct lock lever/arm for the back of the cylinder. Here is a picture of what the correct one looks like for the rear and side doors that works with the lock mechanism in the picture above.

I also found a set of 4 locks and ignition on e-bay so now I can have one key. The PO of my van had a different key for each lock and ignition.

The lock cylinders seem to be the same for left and right sides; the "arms" for the driver's and passenger's door locks are different than the side/rear doors. I don't know what locks go where because my van was completely disassembled when I got it- so I'm learning too.

Over the last few day I was able to remove the latch mech from the donor door set. I had to cut off the outside handle square shaft though. Next I tried to remove the outside handle/square shaft from the van with hopes of reusing it with the donor latch. No luck in simply removing it with some PB blaster and a little effort. I had to dissect the latch inside the door to get the handle/shaft free of the lock mech.






So now I have the donor latch soaking in PB blaster with hopes of removing the cut square shaft so I can install it with the original square shaft/handle and have a working door latch.

Over the weekend I installed the donor latch. Its now functioning as it should. Once my new lock set and lever shows up I'll have it locking too. I let the latch mech sit over night in the PB blaster bath but I still couldn't remove the square shaft. I ended up cutting it down as much as possible and then drilling it out, trying not to damage the corners of the opening.


I still had enough purchase of the shaft into the mechanism to operate it. One of the pivot points had become ovalized over time and from all my banging on the latch to remove the shaft material, I was left with a lot of slop in the handle insert so I applied some JB weld with hopes of tightening up the insert, which worked well.


I'll still keep my eyes open for a better replacement and I also have an idea for a better fix that I'll be working on.