Door lock tail piece

[Tom S]

The rearward screw is in the door jamb, just above the level of the door latch. It may be hidden by the door seal.?

Yes, this rear screw. You don't have even close to a straight shot at it & it's too tight to remove with the screwdriver at that angle without striping it. Well, can't really get the screwdriver to grip it in the first place.
The front screw is easy with the door cards removed.
Even with a tiny 4" pair of vice grips I can't get a grip on the head.  I might try to grind down a phillips head insert bit so it's short enough to get between the latch & the screw.

Oh, yeah, when I loosened the latch before I had to use my hand held hammer operated impact driver. The lower left screw was stuck so tight I thought I was gonna strip the head. Almost did. About beat the thing to death before it finally came loose.

[Tom S]

Got it. Easily loosened the screw on both doors. Might have ground a little more than necessary off that bit. Or not.

[hiball3985]

OK, that one LOL. I replaced mine with allen head.

[Tom S]

OK, that one LOL. I replaced mine with allen head.

I'm surprised that you could even get an allen wrench in there! My 1/8" allen doesn't quite fit straight in. The 3/32" does but seems it would be too small for an allen screw that size.
I think I'd use something with a hex head but I'm just gonna stick with the phillips head since I now have a tool that works.
How did you get the phillips head screw out in the first place?

[RICH MUISE]

I just checked mine out of curiosity, and mine is a straight shot at the screw with the screwdriver in front of the starwheel instead of on top as you had showed. Maybe a difference in your OEM handles and my Dennis Carpenter repops?
BTW, your starwheel pivot/pivot hole looks pretty tight compared to most. If mine was that good, I wouldn't have spent 4 years looking for a nos latch assembly.

[hiball3985]

Mine went in on an angle about where you have the yellow line drawn in your picture. I used an allen head and small flat washer and used a long T handle type allen wrench to install it..

[Tom S]

I just checked mine out of curiosity, and mine is a straight shot at the screw with the screwdriver in front of the starwheel instead of on top as you had showed. Maybe a difference in your OEM handles and my Dennis Carpenter repops?

That's weird. Seems like you would have to drill another hole for that to work. I'd like to see it.

And then Jim says he used a long T handle type allen wrench on his.  Unless it was one of those that have tapered flats at their ends so they can work at an angle I don't see how he could do that. Can't recall what they call them.
Jim, again, how did you get the phillips head screw out in the first place?
Could you guys believe that you both have doors that are that different from my both my '57 & '58?
I sure wouldn't think so. 

[hiball3985]

Tom, I used about the same angle that Rich described, really wasn't a problem. I'll try to get a picture of the allen head I put in tomorrow morning if my old camera will cooperate, it has a mind of its own LOL..

Edit: something more like this angle.

[RICH MUISE]

My camera is malfunctioning with the date info, so once I take a picture, it takes me forever to find it once I transfer it to the computer, I literally have to search thru hundreds and hundreds of pics because it's not consistent even with the wrong dates. If I take a group of pics, like at a show, the computer scatters them all over because of the faulty dates.
Nice photoshop work on Tom's pic, Jim. Yep, mine is just like you're showing.
Tom, I don't remember how the handle is aligned, maybe there's enough slop to make a difference in how that screw is aligned. In other words, maybe there's enough location variation/slop so that if you loosened the screws and pushed the handle forward, it would use the screw hole as a pivot point and rotate the screw head at the angle we have on ours.?
Yes Tom, the pivot hole in the starwheel cover/shield gets worn out and elongated so it lets the starwheel kinda flop around which in turn lets the door move when you hit a bump, which in turn probably wears the hole out even more. Yours appears in the pic  to be worn just a smidge at the bottom of the hole. I've seen used latches advertised on ebay that said "tight", but looking at the pics showed where the cover/shield had been centerpunched next to the hole in a halfassed attempt to tighten the hole.
There shouldn't be a load pressure on the starwheel gear itself when the door is closed, as there is a bearing/or shaft surface on the backside of the star that rides up on the outer plate in the striker plate assembly mounted on the doorjamb. The striker plate is suppose to lift the door about 1/16 as that bearing rides up on the plate.This keeps some of the weight of the door from loading up on the starwheel, which in turn lets the whole system work easily. That design though is what I think eventually wears the hole out.

[Tom S]

...variation/slop ... loosened screws ... pivot point ..rotate
the angle ...

Ok, ok, just kiddin'. 

Hmm, yeah, I see what yer sayin'. Come to think of it I haven't even looked at the screws in the right doors yet. Maybe they're different.  Both the left doors were like that though.

Yeah, Jim did good on that P-chop. That stuff can often take me a very long time with the program I use. An old version of ArcSoft PhotoImpression. I get carried away & keep adding or changing little details  Done quite a few.  People like 'em. Except for maybe the people getting lampooned.
Jim, don't bother about a pic on my account.

[KYBlueOval]

I've been following this thread and it prompted me to dig through the boxes of parts that my car came in, to find the door locks and see if in fact, I have the tail pieces. I DO!!!
In looking at the tail pieces, one of them is stamped with what I read here on the Forum, in another post, as the Key Code. My question is.........should a local locksmith be able to cut a key from that 61 year old code? Or, is there someone here on the Forum that cuts keys from the code. All of this assumes that I'm correct about the code.
John

[hiball3985]

Tom, that was a quick 5 minute chop, A good one would take about 30 minutes. I use GIMP, and it's free 

John, I didn't see any key code on mine, just a small L and R. I don't know about locksmiths, I put in new locks.

[hiball3985]

I took a few pictures of the allen head screw I used and they all came out bad, I couldn't shut off the flash or get the macro to work  Then when I downloaded them it down loaded about 100 other pictures I had deleted off the camera last year. go figure that one?