Screen door space for Brinkley Model I

On our Brinkley Model I265, the screen door has never reliably latched to the outside door. The way it is supposed to work is that when the two doors are connected, the “striker hook” on the outside door (Fig. 1 below) pushes down on the screen door handle, retracting the screen door latch. Then only the outside door latch will be active.

Our problem was that the outside door hook would slowly move upward over time, so that it no longer pushed down on the screen door handle. Then the screen door latch is no longer retracted and catches when both doors were opened, making it difficult to open the doors.

This probably occurred because the hook was initially poorly installed. The two screws holding it to the door were a) not on the same horizontal level, b) not installed perpendicular to the door, and c) had stripped the hole into which they were threaded. Thus the hook could easily slide upwards and stop working.

I finally fixed this today to my satisfaction. I bought a new Lippert striker hook (LC37HD) from eTrailer that has its mounting holes in a different location from the original hook. Thus I could drill new holes and install it correctly. But an issue with any hook installation is that every time the outside door is closed, the hook is pushed sharply upwards by the screen door handle. Thus the hook has a tendency to migrate upwards over time. So I 3D printed a spacer that fits between the hook and the door handle plate (Figs. 2 and 3). Assuming that this plate is immovable, this 3D part will prevent any upward motion of the hook.

The 3D part is shown in more detail in Fig. 4, which shows it from the back (i.e., the side attached to the door). The outer “wings” are recessed by 0.040", which leaves space for some Scotch double-sided mounting tape (414H-48) to attach the part to the door.