DIY: Replacing the key cylinder on sliding patio door

01/09/2018

Prob­lem: We have 2 vinyl slid­ing glass doors, one in the kitchen out to the deck, and one in the base­ment walk­out to the back­yard. They were both installed with keyed locks. Right after pro­fes­sion­al instal­la­tion, they worked well. It was good for peace of mind to know that there were oth­er ways to get in and out of the house oth­er than the front door. How­ev­er, a few years in, the locks stopped work­ing prop­er­ly, where­in the keys would­n’t turn eas­i­ly. I don’t remem­ber exact­ly why, but my broth­er and I took it upon our­selves to try and “fix” them…basically the wrong way. By no means should you ever use WD-40 inside locks!!!!!! DON’T DO IT.

Anyways…here was my quest to replace the key cylin­ders, only nec­es­sary because the front door’s latch and dead­bolt were act­ing up in the frigid cold and we were afraid we would­n’t be able to get back into the house! What’s the point of hav­ing a lock­able back door when you can’t even use it?? Also, resale in the future.

1. Assess­ing the prob­lem: In one lock, the key refused to turn. In the oth­er, the key would­n’t even go in all the way. The only way to pin­point the prob­lem was to take apart the door han­dle appa­ra­tus. The set­up was sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple, and it was imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent that it was­n’t the mor­tise lock that was the prob­lem.

2. Research: As usu­al with any DIY, I’m on the inter­net look­ing for how to accom­plish my goals. And as usu­al, I find noth­ing that is exact­ly what I’m look­ing for. There are videos and web­sites spe­cif­ic for Ander­sen doors which do not have the same lock and han­dle set. There are plen­ty on how to change mor­tise locks, but almost noth­ing on chang­ing the key cylin­der. So, per cus­tom, I shall be half wing­ing it and half using as much infor­ma­tion as I could find.

3. Buy­ing: I start look­ing for replace­ment cylin­ders and make a run out to Lowes, Home Depot and Wal­mart look­ing for it. No luck. No one stocks key cylin­ders. The Lowes door guy said they don’t stock parts. All places have the gener­ic replace­ment patio door han­dle, but only one has a lock and it looks like garbage. ONLINE BUYING TIME. Basi­cal­ly, there’s only one and it sound­ed cor­rect, so debat­ing between Lowes and Ama­zon, I went with the faster ship. I bought this: The Prime-Line E2000. I had no clue which mod­el to choose, so I just went with this one.

4. Item: The next day, I receive them! That was fast! I was­n’t even expect­ing it, so of course, what do I do? I pre­pare to INSTALL!!! Whoo!! Com­par­ing with the old cylin­der which I had removed and messed with, it looks right…except for break­away tail­piece where the incre­ments are much wider apart than in the pic­ture. Every­thing else was the same and it came with keys.

5. Instal­la­tion: 

A) Tools I need­ed: Screw­driv­er, safe­ty glass­es, pli­ers, met­al file (not real­ly nec­es­sary), rotary tool with met­al cut­ter disc, tape and head­lamp (I was doing this at night)

B) Unscrew screws hold­ing in the han­dle. Don’t lose the screws!

C) Remove piece hold­ing in the cylin­der.

D) Break away the tail­piece of the new cylin­der to the same size as the old one. Hope­ful­ly yours is on the incre­ments. This is where the dis­crep­an­cy in break­away points got me into trou­ble. I tried a met­al file, the pli­ers, to cut a half incre­ment and in the end man­aged to break too much off and made it com­plete­ly use­less. Then I got the bright idea of fit­ting the old break­away into the new one. So, using the pli­ers, I opened up the back end and found that the new wash­er was ridicu­lous­ly flim­sy com­pared to the orig­i­nal one, so it would work out bet­ter!! Except…the pin and a spring fell out and ren­dered it com­plete­ly use­less, where the key would­n’t turn at all. That’s how I learned why the orig­i­nal cylin­der stopped work­ing. Same prob­lem. On the sec­ond one, I used what I should have used to begin with, which is the rotary tool. Hold­ing onto it tight­ly with the pli­ers for guide and safe­ty, donned safe­ty glass­es and cut care­ful­ly. Then I filed down the end to rid the sharp parts. How sim­ple was that? Waste of time and a per­fect­ly good cylin­der.

E) Now for the frus­trat­ing part: Replac­ing it all. **Impor­tant!! Make SURE that the mor­tise lock is stick­ing out in the “lock” posi­tion before you do this and that the cylin­der lock remains ver­ti­cal so that you can pull out the key! If you don’t, you’ll have to redo it all again. Like me. ** Align the out­side por­tion into the slant­ed hole in the mor­tise lock. I rec­om­mend lots of patience as I had the worst time doing this in the dark with my head­lamp and very cold tem­per­a­tures out­side. Then do the same with the inside por­tion. I used tape to steady the exte­ri­or part while insert­ing the inte­ri­or. Make sure both are flush to the door. If not, then adjust the tail­piece. Test both lock mech­a­nisms and replace the screws.

F) Yay! It’s all put back togeth­er! Test the lock inside and out­side! There’s a lit­tle stick now at the extreme of the lock, but it works! I can get back in with the key if I get stuck outside…and climb up onto the deck from under­neath…

The prod­uct isn’t the best qual­i­ty in the world, and it dif­fers a tad (tail­piece incre­ments and key shape) from the list­ing on Ama­zon, but I could­n’t find any oth­er cylin­ders and it works for me. I wor­ry that the wash­er inside will break in the near future. What should have tak­en maybe 15–20 min­utes end­ed up tak­ing me 1 hour and 20 min­utes. Minor errors and tech­ni­cal mis­takes are always a big killer for me, but…no pain no gain!! As usu­al with my DIY projects. I’d like to say that once I receive anoth­er cylin­der that the oth­er door will be a cinch, but I know bet­ter than to expect that. Also, I found that it’s pret­ty amaz­ing how sim­ple the lock mech­a­nism is. At least for now, we have some­thing that works.