After hearing of a failure in the bond of a shoot bolt guide to the door I
have been considering how to avoid such a failure in my doors. The concern is
that I don't see how to assure that the shoot bolt bonds to the inside of the
door panel while avoiding bonding the shoot bolt into the guide; relying on
the bond around the outer rim of the guide seems less desirable.
My current concept is to mold a tunnel of flox about an inch long inside each
of the holes where the shoot bolt guides mount prior to bonding the guides in
place. I have made a tool to shape the flox from a bit of plastic pipe which
is about 30 mils larger in diameter than the guide with 2/3 of the
circumference removed for about 2 inches from one end to allow forming and
shaping the tunnel. These tunnels will be fine tuned with the Dremel prior to
Reduxing the guides in place. By providing bonding area all the way around I
expect to be able to get support at other than the outside end, plus if a
failure occurs the movement of the guide will be constrained by the flox
tunnel such that the door should remain latched.
Anyone have a better idea?
Also, I have seen cracking around the plexiglas in one Europa, apparently in
the filler just outside of where the plexi ends. Discussions on this
phenomena were inconclusive at the time in that one opinion was that this was
due to faulty fitting while the other was that a layer of very thin glass
cloth, available at hobby shops, should be used over this area extending over
the plexi by 1/4 to 1/2 inch.
Has anyone else experienced cracking in this area? How would faulty fitting
cause this problem? Would adding the glass tape help? Would the glass tape
make it exceptionally difficult to change the plexi if necessary sometime in
the future?
Regards, John A044 Newtown, CT
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