uPVC door stuck after hearing something ‘drop’ inside

[Chris7197]

Hi all, so I have a uPVC back door and last night when I tried pulling the handle up to lock it, I heard something drop inside the door and now the handle just moves up and down freely without engaging anything - so the door is stuck closed

From my research it appears to be related to the gearbox, but to identify the model and what replacement I need, I have to open the door to see what model gearbox it has. But I’ve tried many methods to open the door with no luck - I’ve tried wedging wallpaper scraper in the gaps to try to loosen the latches but I’ve had no luck. I’ve also taken the handles off and used a flat head screwdriver to turn the spindle but again it doesn’t work.

I have noticed that there’s quite a large gap between the door and doorframe at the bottom and middle of the door, but I’m not sure if this is new or not (pics attached)

Any ideas on how I can actually get the door open? Or what the problem could be?

Thanks

Door – Google Drive

drive.google.com

 

[crank39]

Ok so my first thought was the square drive in the gearbox had disintegrated allowing the handle to just spin but it looks intact, I'm assuming the spindle was using the top square hole, try putting the spindle in the handle and trying the lower hole, see if it'll open

 

[robinbanks]

Have you ever been able to turn the key a lot in the "unlock" direction and have it open the door? If so, does that work now?

(some barrel/gearbox combos will withdraw the latch if you do another 1.25 or so turns of the key after you have unlocked the door)

I’ve also taken the handles off and used a flat head screwdriver to turn the spindle but again it doesn’t work

Can you describe more accurately what the behaviour is when you attempt this? ("It doesn't work" is a paraphrase of "what I observed did not match my expectations" but what were your expectations and what were your observations?)

 

[Chris7197]

Thanks both I’ll try the suggestion with the ‘other’ slot below the spindle slot tomorrow.

Yeah the key has always turned fine, and now when I turn ‘lock ’ it, I can hear a sound but it doesn’t seem to fully turn as before

With using a flat head screwdriver I expected to be able to make the latches open by ‘forcing’ the spindle to move but maybe that was stupid!

 

[crank39]

Something has broken inside the gearbox somewhere connected to the top square spindle drive, however the bottom one while a redundant drive may still work enough to open the door, it's worth a go