A customer in Walton-on-Thames got in touch because the front door had become difficult to open from outside.
This door used a self-locking multipoint system.
As soon as the door is pulled shut, the locking points engage automatically, so the key is mainly used to operate the system from outside and to throw the additional deadbolt when required. These doors commonly use a pull bar externally rather than a conventional lever handle.
On inspection, the bottom hook was badly out of alignment.
The top hook and latch were engaging, but the bottom hook was still roughly half an inch behind where it needed to be.
The hinges had reached the limit of their available adjustment, so I moved the keep instead.
That improved the operation considerably, although I was not completely satisfied that the ageing system was perfect.
For the time being, the existing mechanism was saved and the door was usable again.
How long it would continue before needing further work was impossible to say, but replacing parts unnecessarily when an adjustment can buy useful extra life would not have made sense either.
