Unique to 1970 - door lock won’t work unless latch fully closed

[Dakota]

I'm throwing in this post here in case someone else has a similar issue. 

Now that I'm finally driving my Challenger, I needed to fix the lock on my driver side door.  The "lock" lever in the armrest would only go about half way down before being blocked elsewhere.  While trying to figure out what to do,  I came across the thread below on Moparts.org which indicated that there's another one of those "70 only" things that the lock won't work with a key or with the lock lever unless the door latch is fully closed.  In later model years, the latch doesn't have to be closed to lock the door.

https://board.moparts.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics/1461980/70-challenger-door-lock-mechanism.html

There are actually 2 latching positions as shown in the pictures below.  In the partially closed position (1st pic), the latch can capture the striker pin but there still could be some movement of the door.  In the fully closed position (2nd pic), a metal tab in the latch clicks to a new position that allows the lock to be engaged. 

I didn't remember hearing a door rattle when I drove, but it turned out that I needed to move the striker pin almost 3/8" outboard from the way it came from the body shop to hit the fully closed position in the latch and enable the lock mechanism.  It appears that there was enough pressure against the door bumpers to keep the rattling to a minimum while it was only partially latched. 

The best detective tool turned out to be putting a series of thin (1/8-1/4") strips of painter's tape with 1/16" gaps between the pieces across the latch. When the door is closed, the striker pin tears or bends the tape it touches, leaving a pretty clear indication of how far it traveled into the latch, which in turn provided guidance on how much to move the pin.

[Dakota]

Some additional pics from driver side door...

[DeathProofCuda]

@Dakota

Awesome information.  Thanks for posting this.

[Chryco Psycho]

I did them same thing to mine , bent the tab out of the way so it would function better .