The rebuilding of Norman's 75 Eleganza II

The Door Handle and Latch I really have to throw a sack full of at-a-boys at Jim Bounds of the Cooperative Motor Works down in Orlando, FL. http://www.gmccoop.com/ He has been unbelievably helpful and fully entitled to major accolades. When I get this buggy back on the road I plan to drive down to meet this fellow and buy him a large beverage. In my latest packages from the Coop, I received most of the rubber necessary to overhaul the MH windows, several tubes of Dow 941 sealant to address the multitude of remaining leaks, a sack full of S.S. screws for the back door and a shiny new door handle mechanism to replace my rusting original. Now, as Jim explained, there are two ways to go on these. There is lesser expensive unmodified version of this Peterbuilt substitute or there is the slightly more expensive modified version of the same. Well, I've got more time than money, I told him, so I ordered the former. Having just acquired a new digital camera a few days ago, I decided to burn up some RAM with a few shots of the modification and installation my new door handle. Removing the old one was uneventful. After detaching the two panels in the lower half of the door, the handle mechanism came out easily. I could easily see that the differences between the two were that the keyway for the lock cylinder needed to be filed a bit to accept the old cylinder. In addition, the primary lever arm was T-shaped to allow attachment to the inner handle. The replacement had an L-shaped lever attached. Four flush rivets attach the mechanism to the chrome faceplate. These must be drilled or ground off to separate these two and allow access to the large pivot pin upon which the lever is mounted. This pivot pin is also riveted from behind on this plate and must be drilled out. In this manner, the original T-shaped lever is removed from the original handle and will be re-installed on the new one.