right hand door lock

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I guess in 1930’s Pierce-Arrows the front passenger can’t lock their door from the inside, it apparently only can be done with a key from the outside.

I was assembling the inside door plate for what I thought would be the final time when I tried to verify function of the door latch and locking. The inside door handle would pull the latch to open the door but wouldn’t go into lock mode. After taking it apart again I found there is an ear on the inside door handle pivot that intentionally prevents locking from the inside. The drivers side and rear doors do not have that.

It has been a ritual on my Packard to lock all doors before moving the car, drilled into me because it has suicides on all four doors. The Pierce front doors are hinged from the front so maybe it was not considered necessary to be able to positively lock from the inside. These days of course we worry about being able to keep people from getting in.

I will probably cut that ear off.

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Jim,

You know that if you close the doors when the handle is in the locked position, it locks them and they cannot be unlocked from the outside using the key. The tab on the right front door prevents your inadvertently locking all the doors, with no way to enter the car!

[Author nameAuthor names are only available to PAS members.]

Great point! Thanks, didn’t realize that. On my Packard the latch bolt is locked when the inside door handle is in lock position, so you can’t close the door. The Pierce is more convenient in not having that bang when someone inadvertently pulls the handle back to lock when closing the door, and the doors can be locked from the outside without crawling over the back seat to lock the rear doors and slide to exit out the passenger side to lock the drivers door.

On the other hand, the Packard   has positive confirmation that the latch is fully engaged when you pull the handle to lock, important to me for suicide doors.

A bit concerned on my Pierce, I have gone through 4 iterations now to get the doors aligned and one rear (suicide) door still requires a bit of a push to fully latch.

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