Composite Door Nightmare

[Mattenstein]

Hi everyone, hope there's someone on here who knows the gearbox of a Yale composite door inside out!
Mine were fitted 2 and a half years ago and for the past year or so, one of them has been a b****r to lock. Presumably due to misalignment the key would be very stiff to turn and sometimes outright refuse to lock unless you rammed the handle up really hard (it locked fine when open).
Now it seems all that forcing has worn away at something because I now have a worse problem in that sometimes even if it seems I've locked it, it opens again anyway! Lift handle, turn key *click*, check handle and it goes back down again Often it requires quite a lot of fiddling to get it to actually stay locked and now the trick seems to be to turn the key the other way!

So what, do I need a new gearbox or can it be fixed? I think the doors are from the superior series, the cylinders certainly are as they have the same sort of key as Garrison/MulTLock.

 

[Gazman16]

Where did you get the door from? The fitters should come and fix it under their guarantee.

 

[Doggit]

Is the problem actually with the cylinder, or has the door dropped. You mention that the door locks when open, so it's more than likely that the locking points are now misaligned. The locking points are only held in with a couple of screws, so as long as you can work out where they are supposed to be, then it's easy to adjust them. But as Gazman says, get talk to the fitters.

 

[Mattenstein]

Where did you get the door from? The fitters should come and fix it under their guarantee.

It was supplied and installed by CityGlass Bradford, but they were subtracted by a company who were project managing renovation works on my house, it's a long story.
Since the doors looks to have been made by Yale, I looked on their website and it seems they all come with a 5 year warranty for 'all metalwork', however no details of a warranty were handed to us. I will chase it up with the project manager.

Is the problem actually with the cylinder, or has the door dropped. You mention that the door locks when open, so it's more than likely that the locking points are now misaligned. The locking points are only held in with a couple of screws, so as long as you can work out where they are supposed to be, then it's easy to adjust them. But as Gazman says, get talk to the fitters.

The door USED to lock when open with indeed suggested to me that the locking points were misaligned. However now after several months of locking it with great difficulty (key very stiff), whatever the cylinder engages with seems to be damaged as now (even with door open) the lock can be operated and seemingly secured with the key quite smoothly, yet remains unlocked (handle will just go back down), it takes a lot of trial and error turning back and forth to get it to actually lock the gearbox.

 

[Gazman16]

Could be the cylinder, Could be the gearbox but the door definetley needs adjusting too.

1st off door alignment. There should be an equal 4-5mm gap down the sides and along the top of the door slab. If not we need picks of the hinges.
Then do you have another PVC/composite door in the house? If so you can swap the cylinders over to test them, Easy job 1 screw to undo (the one on the side of the door about 15mm lower than the key hole) then turn the key in the lock while pulling and it should come straight out.
Switch the 2 locks over and see if the other lock works in this door and the suspect lock works in the other door.

Just because the locks are Yale dosent mean the door is. I think Doorstop make Yale's doors. Have a look around the edges of the door and inside edge of the frame for and names/markings/codes.