We were able to sneak in one more camping weekend with our 1965 Avion C10 Truck Camper in late October. We spent a few nights at Four Mile Creek state park near Lewiston NY. This campground is right on Lake Ontario and on a clear day you see Toronto across the lake. We enjoyed hanging out by the lake and and did a couple of short hikes nearby. One day we drove over to Old Fort Niagara and toured the history museum and fort that is located where the Niagara River empty’s into Lake Ontario. We also stopped at Art Park in Lewiston to hike the trail along the Niagara Gorge and check out some some of art on the grounds there including one of their parking lots that is a huge mural.
On our last night there I noticed something funny going on with our door latch and discovered that the lock cylinder was not functioning properly, it was loose and in the locked position and would not unlock. If I closed the camper door, I would not be able to get the door open again. I decided to try taking the lock apart on the spot to see if it was a simple fix, at least to allow us to close the door without being locked out. The lock assembly came apart easily and I promptly lost a few small parts in the grass just as it was getting dark. After hunting around for 30 minutes with a flashlight and then wearable headlight I managed to find the missing parts. I then tried to see if could figure out what was wrong and if I could get the lock back together. A hour later I decided that we should just find a way to secure the door for the night and the trip home in the morning so that I could deal with it later. The the next day the trip home was uneventful using our clothes-line to keep the door from opening. Vintage camper travel tip, always have things like rope and duct tape and don't be surprised if you need to troubleshoot on the road!
Over the winter we decided to look into options for a different door latch. The old Bargman L-100 lock had a round knob that was awkward to turn to get the door open. I ended up buying a new lock that is paddle style that from the outside you just pull towards you to open the door, and now that it's installed it's proving easier to use than the old one. After looking at a lot of options online I ended buying the lock from a company called Latch-it, it’s well made and all metal with a chrome finish. There area lot of locks of this style that look pretty similar to each other, but some are definitely better made than others. The folks at Latch-it were also super helpful in my requests for dimensions and other info. I did have to make some modifications to get it work with our our door which is a little thicker than modern campers. I had to fabricate a small extension for the interior paddle and modify the locking lever, I also have to enlarge the hole in the door a little, but it’s working well and definitely a big improvement. Besides functioning better we also like that it doesn't look out of place, looking like it may have been original to the untrained eye.
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