I know Airstream loves to liken their doors to that of an airplane—strong, solid, well-constructed—but it doesn’t take long for all the slamming to get old. A few weeks ago, Jill was falling asleep when I left to use the camp showers. When I got back, I had no choice but slam the door to get it closed all the way, waking her up in the process. We’d been dealing with this for over a year, so at that time we assumed that’s just how it was with Airstream doors.
A few days later, I was doing some regular maintenance on the Airstream, including lubricating the stabilizer jacks, the steps, our hitch, and so on. When I got to the door lock, it occurred to me that maybe lubricating the door’s latching mechanism would reduce the force required to shut the door. And wow, it made a huge difference! Instantly, the effort needed to close the door was dramatically reduced. I wish I had known to try this sooner!
You should know that lubrication alone isn’t a panacea if your Airstream’s door is hard to close. Some time ago we learned—the hard way, of course—that overextending your stabilizer jacks can cause the body to twist in a way that makes the door harder to close. These days we only extend our stabilizer jacks until they barely make firm contact with the ground. That keeps the Airstream from shifting around as we walk without inhibiting the door’s ability to close. Between adding lubrication and ensuring that our stabilizer jacks aren’t overextended, I’d say our Airstream’s door is now “satisfactorily” easy to close. Obviously, shutting the door will never be a “whisper quiet” operation. All we want is for it to be “reasonably” quiet.
If you still need to slam your door shut after applying lubrication and ensuring that your jacks aren’t cranked down too hard, you might need to get the door itself adjusted by an Airstream repair shop.
Closing From The Outside vs The Inside
As you can see in the video above, closing our door from the outside now just requires a firm shove. However, closing it from the inside still isn’t quite as slam-free as I’d like. I “can” close it with a firm tug of the door handle alone, but I still prefer yanking it closed from about three to four inches out. Why? Because of all the complaints I regularly see online of interior door handles snapping off when used to shut the door. It feels like less force is applied to the handle when aided by a bit of swing momentum. At some point in the future, I want to install a dedicated handle for closing the door, similar to the one shown below. Until then, we’re still living with more door “slamminess” than we’d like—but it’s much less now that we’ve applied some lubricant.
Is your door hard to close? Try adding some lubricant and see if it gets any easier. Let me know how it works! I’ll be curious to hear if this helps other Airstreamers reduce the amount of slam required to completely shut their doors.
