The inside upper door latch on my 1964 PA24 broke off at the plastic shaft portion as I tried to open the door from the inside. I was locked in for a short while until the FBO sent someone to open the outside handle to let me out. The main door locking mechanism still works fine. Now I will be looking for repair parts or a replacement upper door latch. I don’t know if this was an original part on the aircraft, and I am not sure where to start looking for the latch or the parts necessary to fix it. Any ideas on where to search for this item would be greatly appreciated.

Duane:
The latch was most likely the webco door latch, look in the log book, it will detail what latch was installled. (I believe there are other latches other than Weco's that were installed on the Comanches, so before ordering, check.)
Call Webco, they most likely have replacement handles.

Gary

 

Duane, do you have a picture of the "broken" piece? I would think if it is just the handle that is
broken, you could just replace it with a new one..... I can't think of a reason it would take 10 hours to change out a handle.

Gary

I'm re-doing the interior in my PA-24 right now, and removed the entire (Webco) upper door latch mechanism to remove the surrounding upholstery. To do that I had to remove the outer door latch handle, which is just like the inner handle. The process took no more than 10 minutes. It will take the same amount of time to reinstall. If all you need is a new handle, it shouldn't take 3 minutes to replace.