36 coupe door lock question

L

lodown2003

Member
what was the purpose of having the door lock on the passenger side door and not on the drivers side. hope someone out there has a answer.
 
The driver would have to lock the drivers door from the inside then slide across the seat and lock the passanger door from the curb side so as not to be in the street locking the drivers door with traffic passing by. I have a 1938 Ford Club Coupe it's the same way.
 
There is a way to lock all four doors on a '35 fordor sedan, from either the drivers or passengers side, without using a key, and once all doors are locked by this method a key will not open the front passenger side door lock. That's right, you will be locked out of your car with your keys in your hand/pocket. Don't ask me how or why I know this :(:mad::rolleyes:
 
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How did you finally get in? .........My 34 pickup (avatar) has a neat little hole in the passenger side door where the lock is supposed to go :rolleyes:
 
Straightpipes said:
How did you finally get in? .........My 34 pickup (avatar) has a neat little hole in the passenger side door where the lock is supposed to go :rolleyes:
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This happened to me at the beginning of our Blue Ridge Parkway Tour in October. I always thought it's a PIA to lockup my fordor sedan by pulling the door handles up on three doors from the front passenger side and then locking that door with my key. I knew I could not lock the front doors by pulling the inside handle up and closing the door. The internal door mechanism always pulls these handles down into the unlocked position. However, this is not the case on the rear doors. They can be locked by pulling the inside handle up and closing the door. This fact got my feeble mind thinking....hey, I can lock my car from either rear door by pulling all four internal handles in the up position and closing the rear door. I thought I had figured out a way to outsmart old Henry.....WRONG!!! When I tried to open the car with my key, the lock turned but the door could not be opened. Of course I had made sure that all windows were in the full up or fully closed position just before locking all the doors. I did think of a way to get a long piece of wire in through the speedometer cable hole in the firewall and hook the end on the drivers side internal door handle but could not pull it down to open the door. The window in the drivers side front door had developed a crack two months earlier.....so.....I thought if I need to break a window, that will be the one that gets broken. I used a Phillips screw driver and a hammer to punch a 1/2" dia hole in the glass right above the internal door opening handle. Then my good friend, Cecil Polan, inserted the wire through the hole and pushed the door handle down which unlocked the door. It nearly killed me to punch a hole in the window of my original Rouge class car but we did what we had to do. Thus began day two of the 2011 BRP Tour. :)
I do have pictures of this event thanks to Cecil asking his wife Kay to fully document this for me just in case I forgot about this as CRS becomes more of an issue.;):D
 
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Wow, that's a hard lesson.............I like the speedometer hole trick. If your handles droop like mine it would probably worK.
 
Many years ago my wife had driven my '36 Ford coupe to a local shopping center, she had taken the coupe because it was out in the driveway and she did not want to move it so she could get her car out of the garage.
About an hour after she left I got a phone call that she had locked herself out of the car, which reputedly is impossible. I arrived at the shopping center to find a crowd gathered around the car, several men were doing their best to help the lady get into her car.. they had tried "slim jims" coat hangers and forcing the handles to no avail. One man had gotten a tire wrench out of his car and was going to break a window.. My wife stopped him because she knew that all of the glass in the car is original '36 Ford glass that came in the car when it was new.
I could not figure out how she had locked herself out of the car.. She told me that she had reached across and locked the right door by pulling the handle up, she then exited the car pulling the left door handle up and closed the left door.. Normally the handle would have returned to the unlocked position when the door was closed, for some unknown reason this did not happen.
I sized up the situation, I could not get into the car via the trunk because the deck lid is operated remotely using '41 Ford conv top lift motors.. breaking a window was not an option... My car is a late 9/36 car, all of the window codes run from 6-36 to 9-36.
I had one option, I got a pair of pliers from my truck, being quite thin at the time I wiggled under the car, using the pliers I removed the two 1/4-20 screws holding the battery box cover.. I had relocated the battery to the trunk area many years earlier to allow room for the brake master cylinder.. Carefully pushing the battery cover up gave me enough room to use a coat hanger to pull the handle down and thereby unlock the door. I knew the cover screws would be easy to remove because I had to remove the cover periodically to check the fluid in the master cylinder.
Problem solved, I left the pickup for my wife and took "Henry" home.
 
Good storys .I understand that if you hammer on the door with your fist , above the handle somtimes itL drop down
 
It has happened to me that the 'S' shaped spring clip on the remote that the handle attaches to, is broken (as they usually are), and allows the handle to 'fly up', when you shut the door a bit hard, and locks you out.
 
Managed to lock both doors on a '33 many years ago, thought I would knock out the hinge pins since they had been out recently. By the time I tapped one out, the handle
moved out out of the locked position. Thought that was pretty lucky.
 
Was there a law in some states from exiting ftom road side of vehicle ? I was told that years ago.Do not know if it is true. my 2cents lee34
 
I doubt very much that there were laws that stated a vehicle had to be entered from the right (curb side) of a vehicle..
Until closed vehicles became the more common style of body, people did not bother to lock their vehicles up, not much point with canvas side curtains, which were not generally used except in very bad winter weather.
In reality, I think the one door lock was simply an economy and courtesy measure. In general practice the gentleman unlocked and opened the passenger side door for the lady, as he was walking around the car to the drivers side, the considerate lady returned the favor by reaching across to unlock the left door for the gentleman.
However, as a general rule the lady actually just sat in her seat which required the gentleman to tap on the driver side window and point to the locked handle... Been there many times in times gone by...
By 1940 most cars had key locks on both sides, especially on the delux models.
 
In the early to mid 60's in Ohio you could get a learners driving permit when you were 15 if you took a driving class in school. They taught us to always exit from our cars from the passenger side in the city limits of Cincinnati. If it was a law I can't remember.But I do remember how uncomfortable it was. Ed.( Got more time than sense.)
 
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Is the lock on one side only a Ford thing or was it common for all makes? I locked myself out of my '36 pickup because the 's' spring was gone and the handle locked it's self when I closed the door. I ended up breaking the window but if it ever happens again I will try one of the great tips from you barners. Thanks

Bill
 
36Bill said:
Is the lock on one side only a Ford thing or was it common for all makes? I locked myself out of my '36 pickup because the 's' spring was gone and the handle locked it's self when I closed the door. I ended up breaking the window but if it ever happens again I will try one of the great tips from you barners. Thanks

Bill
Click to expand...

As a general rule, the majority of vehicles made prior to about 1940 only had keyed locks on the passenger side door...
Ford locks are generally in the door, where-as GM is usually in the handle. The other car manufactures also generally preferred the lock in the handle.
There is a very rare series of '33-34 Ford cars (not sure of the actual year) that have GM style of locks in the handles because the doors did not get punched for the Ford type of lock. Reputedly H. Ford would not tolerate sending the cars back through production to retrofit the doors with locks so they went out and bought GM type handles with locks to solve the problem.
 
I once managed to lock myself in my car in the garage at home due to a faulty latch mechanism. Luckily I had my mobile phone with me and I was able to call the house and get my son to come and let me out.

I didn't do that again.

Mart.
 
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