It’s been good to see Cazzer again, admire his blue Mercedes GT & see the sites of Belfast, which is a beautiful city. The original plan was to head out on the Saturday for a day’s driving. Unfortunately, despite my attempts to fix with JB Weld before setting out, the driver’s door opened several times whilst driving from the ferry to Cazz’s digs, so that required resolution before any day trips. A quick search for a new door striker latch from a local source in NI drew a blank. Therefore the focus was on repairing the current striker which was losing the black rubber sleeve around the bar. This meant the door latch was not fully engaging & the vibration from driving was eventually shaking it open.

A number of fixes were attempted, including bulking up the worn area with copper wire supported with epoxy resin, and some heroic 3D printing by Cazzer to produce ABS plastic sleeving to replace the worn rubber. Alas, the latch has made mincemeat of both, and a tentative trip up the coast road had to be aborted when the door opened coming off a roundabout. We returned to base for a rethink, door wedged shut with a repurposed sandwich packet covered in a microfiber cloth to protect the paint.

Some brainstorming prompted  another trip to B&Q in the AMG GT (not bad for a shopping car!) with the tentative purchase of some bungees, rubber tubing, Gorilla tape & aluminium foil tape. The aluminium tape was an instant fail, failing to survive first contact with the latch. Due to the stripped down design of the door interior, The bungees did not have anything to clip to. Covering the latch bar with the rubber tubing & then protecting it with Gorilla tape has allowed the door to shut & latch engage, but destroys the tube/tape so this is a sacrificial fix. Only a test drive will establish whether it survives being on the road. Fingers crossed.