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Hello All,
I have a 1978 Corvette where the drivers door latch will close but when I open the door the latch will stay unlatched. After a while the latch will make an audible "click" and then the door will be able to latch again. I've taken the latch out and cleaned it out of all the old dirt and grease and re-greased everything back up and it still does the same thing. Should I replace the door latch, and if so where do you suggest I get another. The door latch is original to the car and it's been in the family since new.
Hey All... I figured out why this was occurring in case anyone else has something similar happen. What I found out was that I replaced the outside door handle the prior year because the whole assembly fell apart, and when I did that I didn't grease any of the components of that assembly. It seemed to work okay for sometime, but what I found was the arm that comes down from the outside door handle to the latch was binding up near the top where the arm comes down causing the door to remain in the open position and not allowing the door to latch. After some time the door handle would release making an audible clicking noise and the door functioned as normal.
I greased up everything this last time after taking everything apart for the 4th time and now things move and open/close as they should. See the attached picture with the blue circle around that rod that opens the door from the outside that was binding up.
1978 Door Latch Issue
