A customer in Feltham got in touch about a tilt-and-turn door serving a Juliet balcony. The handle was making a grinding noise and, although the door would still lock, it was noticeably draughty. They wanted me to find out what was going on before it became a bigger problem.
Once on site, I confirmed that the gearbox had broken and needed attention. I advised the customer not to keep locking the door in that condition because there was a real risk of the mechanism blocking shut, which would turn the repair into a more involved opening job as well.
After the initial inspection and quote, the customer decided to go ahead. I first tried to source the complete tilt-and-turn mechanism, but finding an exact replacement was next to impossible. The practical option was therefore to repair the gearbox rather than replace the entire system.
Once the replacement gearbox section was fitted, I moved on to the alignment. That uncovered another issue: several of the frame keeps had apparently never been positioned correctly. Three of the mushroom locking cams were not even engaging with their keeps.
I carried out the heel-and-toe adjustment, realigned the door and repositioned the keeps so the locking points finally met the frame hardware properly. The difference was substantial. The door operated correctly again and sealed far better than before, making it noticeably less draughty as well as restoring the locking mechanism.
