Sliding door friction brake

[burnercan]

When I took delivery of the shiny new pride and joy a few weeks ago, I marvelled at the ease and silence with which the seemingly anti-gravity sliding door operated. Like butter sliding over a hot pan. Obviously a far cry from the old T3, even with good maintenance! However, after reading a post here about someone getting attacked by their sliding door while parked nose down (I can't remember who, sorry!) I got to thinking about ways to avoid this happening. As I have kids and the door is so heavy, even without major injury it could turn foul a nice afternoon.

The latest in a series of hardware store hacks yielded a simple lo-fi fix to the problem.

I laid a stack of decreasing length strips of black pvc tape on the inboard side of the upper steel rail. Starting about mid door and continuing forward until mid point of the bend. I settled on a stack of 12, but it's easy to add or remove a strip to fine tune the amount of sliption you may want. Looks kind of like a leaf spring pack, and does a nice, smooth, reasonably quiet job of slowing down an out of control door.



While closing the door normally, I can feel just a bit bit of resistance but not at all annoying.

 

[Volkywagen]

Does the handle come off in your hand when you try and open it!?

 

[burnercan]

Does the handle come off in your hand when you try and open it!?

Let me check... no, it's still there

 

[Volkywagen]

i like, it nearly took my leg off last week so ill be giving that a go for sure