How do I tell what year my door is??

[Wvbuzzmaster]

Sort of a unique question… but working on my 1972 Duster passenger door latch as it’s not locking correctly. I finally decided it’s a bad latch, so I start looking up to replace it, when I read 1969-1970 is a latch design, then 1971-later is another latch design… not interchangeable rod hook ups… and my latch setup looks like it is not the 1971 later design rod hook ups but can not tell for sure… but it looks more like the 1969-70 design… Oh, and my passenger door is blue inside while my Duster is factory green… so what year is my passenger door? Is there a way to tell? Am I best off to buy complete 1972 latch/lock button rods etc? I finally determined why the key never worked in the passenger door lol. I am keeping the door since car was repainted a non mopar shade of green at some point and it all matches and is good, just trying to figure out what parts I need to fix the door to lock proper… it always closed and latched great. Also how do you unhook the curly door release rod from the latch assembly…. Still haven't been successful lol.

 

[72bluNblu]

I think you're going to have a hard time narrowing the date of the door down much narrower than '70-'72. For a Duster the door glass was the same '70-72, the door handle locations were the same, the lock location was the same, the interior panels interchange from those years.

Quite honestly, the latch itself might be the biggest tell. Of course there's no guarantee that latch is original either.

As far as fixing it, I would just buy the same latch as the one that was already in there. It worked before, and if you change over to the later style you may need the rest of the internal hardware to go with it. This sort of thing is why you compare the new part to the old part before you try to install it.

Before you do that though, have you tried adjusting the latch?

Door sticks

 

[Wvbuzzmaster]

Never needed to adjust it, always latches fine but doesn’t like to lock, very temperamental about the position on the inner door release as to if and when it will lock at all manually by hand, but only in the fully latched position so figured that to be a mechanism failure. Especially since the inner handle will not unlock the door automatically. The driver side has none of those issues, works great, and is original to the car as far as I can tell.

 

[72bluNblu]

Never needed to adjust it, always latches fine but doesn’t like to lock, very temperamental about the position on the inner door release as to if and when it will lock at all manually by hand, but only in the fully latched position so figured that to be a mechanism failure. Especially since the inner handle will not unlock the door automatically. The driver side has none of those issues, works great, and is original to the car as far as I can tell.

Everything wears over time, that means occasionally you might need to adjust something.

What you're describing doesn't sound like a latch failure at all, it sounds more like you've got play or binding in the rods and mechanisms.

 

[Oldmanmopar]

There is nothing wrong with the latch. They changed the operation so you can't lock the keys in the car.