Luckily we were at home in between trips but still it’s a stomach dropping experience when you put the key in the lock of the caravan door, only to turn it and watch it keep turning around and around in circles, not unlatching. This happened to us recently and set us on a search for what to do next!

Our van is a 2016 Jayco Silverline which we bought second hand in 2019. There are plenty of Facebook groups with suggestions from other caravanners on problems and issues that arise, so it was on a forum that we first posted the problem to see if others had a similar issue and what (other than the obvious call a locksmith) they did to deal with it.

Was it a simple fix? Could we try something that could save us time and more importantly money? Every door, hatch and window of the caravan were locked but we did have a spare set of keys to unlock a side cupboard and front boot if necessary.

We found a particularly helpful suggestion from a person on one of the Facebook groups for our particular model caravan, and his suggestion enabled us to get access to the door handle inside the van and open it. I won’t go into details because although it wasn’t a simple process, I wouldn’t want to give the wrong type of person any ideas.

In the meantime I’m thinking how lucky it is that we weren’t free camping on our own somewhere which we like to do often. I hate to think what more of a headache this problem would have been then.

So now we obviously needed a new lock and keys. We were able to get one from Jayco in Adelaide (a 150 km round trip) and next came fitting the new lock after first removing the old lock with Circlip pliers. A bit of technical know how from our extremely helpful local caravan service centre, and lots of swearing later the new lock was fitted into the existing barrel.

Finally once the locks were switched over, the door lining covering the lock was replaced and all tested we are good to go again.

There’s never a dull moment or lack of material for blogs when you own a caravan.

Cheers

Glenys