Door Latch

I have been working on making a door safety latch that will hold the door closed if you forget to latch it in place with the shock cords.  The inspiration for this comes from the latch used on car hoods.  My first attempt was quite useless so I just gave up for a while.  I knew there had to be an easy way but sometimes the simplest solutions are the hardest to come up with. 

If you have enough speed and hit a bump the door can fly open.  The door just opens all the way missing you entirely but is quite a shock when it happens. It is also possible to damage the door when this happens as all the force is concentrated just in front of the composite hinge.   Here's a photo of the "L" shaped latch.

The  graphite latch weighs in at 7 g so the cord to pull in back with weigh almost the same.  The shock cork to act as the spring will be even heavier.   The latch itself may have to be a bit more robust at the pivot point so it could ends up being almost 10 g.  I haven't finished the mould for the post it gets mounted on yet but that will be done soon.  For those of you without this on your Borealis I am making it so it can be retrofitted in place with a couple of bolts. 

 I want to test  the latch and see if it can be used as a airbrake for long descents.  The latch would hold the door open about 8-10 cm at the front so this should slow you a bit.  I can try it on the way to work as on one section of the hill I will be at 70+ kph.  Curious to see if this will reduce that by 5 kph or so.   I can tell if it works if it slows me enough so that I don't need to use the brakes for the roundabout just past the base of the hill.