2007 Journey Main Entry Door Catch

[tim myers]

This may seem silly and even trivial, but I have questions and concerns about the main entry door on my 2007 Journey. We love leaving the front door open taking advantage of the huge screen door at the main entry, and the ventilation it provides. My concern is that even a slight breeze is capable of moving the hard door past 90 degrees open.

First, is the door capable of moving past 90 degrees without damage?



Also, I remember seeing a picture of a similar aged Itasca, same model, that had what looked to be a solid catch that would hold the door at the 90 degree position and would restrict or eliminate the movement of the door in a breeze.
Does anyone with a similar coach have any information on the free movement of this door or on the catch I am referring to?

[Jim_HiTek]

I have a '02 Journey and the front door does swing past 90 degrees to approximately 120 degrees and there's no evidence anything is broken. It has a heavy metal retarder/stop but it worries me that it's not strong enough if the brisk winds I'm often parked in might over swing it into the passenger side mirror. The full extent of the open door is approximately 12" from the mirror when fully open (though it can over open).

So, what I do is use a heavy duty bungee strap to snug it up. It's attached to the mirror and hooked to the door handle. It holds it open but has the spring action. It can be blown or forcefully opened to just short of touching the mirror (unless the wind really bangs it) but that's rare. Than of course, I can close the screen door.

Note that the bungee is acting like a spring so there's some play when the winds blowing but since it's kind of tight, there's seldom any banging...and if I hear it creaking or tapping the mirror excessively, I rush out there, disconnect the door and close it.

And than I have another set of bungees that I use to restrain it from opening more than 6" or so. I can jamb something between the door and the frame so the bungees hold it tightly, but it's open for some fresh air. Again, I can have the screen door closed and run the bungee out through the screen door opening and attach to the main door handle.

What I did to make it less of a hassle to close the door quickly is I bought one of these bars from Amazon and attached it to the top of the screen door. So at least I can grab that and pull it closed or hold it if the winds pick up suddenly. Sometimes I'll use the bar to bang the screen door into the main door so it'll latch and then pull them both closed.

Screen door bar...

[tim myers]

That gives me some ideas