A customer in Sunbury-on-Thames got in touch because the lock on a set of French doors had stopped working. The handle on the slave door would simply spin round without operating the multipoint mechanism.
That was more than an inconvenience. With the slave door unable to lock properly, the other leaf could potentially be forced and its mechanism damaged as well.
I removed the multipoint system from the door and opened the gearbox. The failed component was immediately visible in the bottom-right section of the case.
On many versions of this gearbox there is another spindle arrangement lower down that can sometimes provide a useful repair option. Because this was fitted to the slave door, however, the internals had been stripped back to the minimum and that extra component simply was not there.
I knew I had the correct replacement part at home, so I made the short trip back to Ashford, collected it and returned to complete the repair.
Once the replacement component was fitted, I rebuilt the gearbox, refitted the multipoint mechanism and tested both the handle and locking operation. The French-door locking system was working normally again without replacing the complete mechanism.
