Got chewed out by an inspector in Minneapolis over door lock adjustments

I was doing a mod on a MCE controller in a 20-story building downtown, and this inspector walks in and watches me set the door lock gap by eye like I always did. He told me I was leaving too much slack and that it would cause nuisance trips within a month. I argued back at first, but he pulled out a feeler gauge and showed me the spec was 3/16 of an inch exactly. I went back and redid every lock on the car that afternoon using that gauge, and I haven't had a single callback on that job since. Has anyone else had to swallow their pride and adjust their whole method after an inspection?

3 comments

3 Comments

west.richard1mo ago

Bet the inspector learned that trick from some crusty old elevator union guy back in the 80s.

jenny471mo ago

Oh COME ON, are we REALLY going to act like a 1/16 inch gap is life or death? I've seen guys set door locks with a folded napkin and a prayer, and the car ran fine for YEARS. @west.richard, your crusty old union guy probably had a whole bag of "just close enough" tricks that kept elevators moving while the engineers were still arguing about specs. Don't get me wrong, I respect the feeler gauge thing, but sometimes "feels right" is literally good enough for the real world.

spencer_park261mo ago

That feeler gauge trick is classic, but what gets me is how often we just eyeball stuff and call it good. Did that inspector say why 3/16 inch is the magic number, or did he just throw the spec at you? Because the difference between "close enough" and "exactly right" on door locks can be the difference between a smooth ride and a car that trips every time someone leans on the door. I had a similar moment with a governor tension adjustment once, where the book said X but I was running Y for years because it felt right. Sometimes those old timers really do know what they're talking about, even if they're grumpy about it.