External caravan door locks

Many moons ago on this forum i posed a similar question re re-enforcing the door lock on our Coachman as the original seemed to be a bit flimsy, was strongly advised not to do this as most of the locks on the market did not offer any additional protection for the money involved, and that if somebody did try to break into your van they would create far more damage to your door if additional locks were fitted than if they simply forced the existing locks.

I took the advice of those that know, never fitted additional locks, in fact on many occasion if we are just taking pooch round the dog walk or going for a shower we never lock the door, but pooch would go crazy if a stranger entered the van whilst we were showering. Touch wood we have never been burgled or had the van broken into or anything stolen from the awning, but on a site in Spain we did see the owner of one MH distraught as some unthinkables had broken in and ransacked the MH, well they had left many valuables in full view . I think when you first pitch up you can guess from the clientel around you whether you can leave your van open or not especially out of season when it is generally older people on site.  . 

Helpful reply thanks which makes a lot of sense. It’s a bit annoying for us to even be considering all this as there’s just one person out there with our key and only valid when caravan is at our house which isn’t too often as it’s stored elsewhere. Now thinking of just getting a new lock barrel - or a pooch maybe?

If you change the lock barrel it might be worth considering changing all the locks on the various lockers around the van.

Remember one key fits all, as a general rule. 

Yes, I’ve thought about that but on the basis that they didn’t go in the caravan at the time I’m not sure they’d spend too much time with lockers, or maybe I shouldn’t have said that!

We had our caravan broken into on site in the south of france some years ago. It obviously took quite some force to get in as both halves of the door were badly twisted and hanging off when we returned.

Biggest problem was getting back to the UK. We had red pennant who organised a fitter to come and try a temporary repair to the door which was just enough to allow us to tow the van back home. We did end the journey with a large amount of black tape holding the door shut in the end and then a 3 month wait to get a new door to replace the damaged one.

Key for me is that this was on standard door locks, I dread to think how much additional damage would be done if I had additional door locks in place because when these scum decide they're getting in your caravan they don't let much get in their way.

btw, total cost of stolen items was £15 in cash (sterling) and nothing else was touched or taken. Damage costs were north of £2,000 by the time everything was put right.

Thanks, that’s helpful 

I have now purchased a new barrel from Trimark. I’ve taken the door handle/lock apart but can’t extract the barrel. Does anybody know how to do this please? Thank you. 

Thanks, that’s helpful

I’ve now bought a new barrel from Trimark. I’ve taken the door handle/lock off but can’t extract the barrel. Does anybody know how to do this please?

Many thanks. 

I think there's a circlip holding the barrel in place on the inner-side of the lock. You might be able to remove it with a couple of small flat bladed screwdrivers but watch out for flying circlips! Putting it back is a little trickier. I'm tempted to use the old phrase "reassemble in reverse order"  but you will need a steady hand and lots of patience. A little dab of grease or Vaseline helps to keep the clip in place whilst you push it on, helps with lubrication too. 

As a matter of interest I fitted a Millenco after an attempted break into my Coachman a few years ago, it was quite simple to fit (following their instructions) and it's still there today. Much more sturdy and I reckon a bigger deterrent than the standard lock. 

As long as caravans have 'plastic' windows which can easily be opened, there’s little point of fitting door locks solely for security reasons. 

We did the same with the Thule equivalent for exactly the same reason.  Luckily the break-in was unsuccessful - just made a bit of a mess of the outside frame around the lock.  Suspect that the attempt was made with a big screwdriver rather than a crowbar.

As has been said often in the past, a determined thief will always win no matter what security is in place.  Our motive in fitting the extra lock was to make our caravan less attractive to break into than the one next door (with apologies to any of our neighbours).