Peugeot Boxer Rear Door Windows

Hello

I wanted to share our recent experience with a broken rear door window and ask for any input.

Whilst holidaying in west Wales, I opened the rear doors of our Boxer based Symbol Plus to access the toilet cassette. The doors have a 'soft' lock at 90 degrees, but to remove the cassette you need to go just beyond this. Whilst I was withdrawing the cassette, a strong gust of wind blew the nearside door hard open to 180 degrees. Despite the rubber stop, the door overshot a little past 180 with the result that the corner of the van caught the tempered glass pane and I was showered in glass fragments. Luckily, although the entire pane was shattered, it largely stayed in one piece - presumably due to the rubber mount and the privacy seal. As a result we were able to do a pretty good job of taping the pane up with Gorilla tape (15m in all) so that we stayed weatherproof and good for the road.

I was a little confused about how best to get the van repaired. Initially, I approached the supplier (not much help at first) and Peugeot. It looked like a repair would cost around £300-£400 with labour and parts. I then discovered that my insurance would cover glass replacement with only a £75 excess and no impact on no claims on condition that I use Autoglass. AG have actually turned out to be very good, though I'm still waiting for a final repair. The biggest problem I had with AG was establishing the specifications for the glass - they arrived with a pane which was almost the same but not quite. I finally managed to clarify things with some help from the Autosleeper technical people. It turns out that the glass is the basic green solar glass as supplied by Peugeot. AS then apply an 'athermic' privacy film. The guy at AS was happy to send me a complimentary film and AG are happy to return with a standard pane - weather permitting! That just leaves me with the problem of affixing the film to the new pane. I'm told that can be a little tricky so I'm going to ask a local privacy glass company to do that for me - anticipating about £30-£40. 

The technical guy at AG was quite helpful too and told me that this was a common problem with the 180 degree doors. It seems they get called out quite often to Ambulances and similar vehicles where the same thing has happened. Apparently you can get over-sized door stops which help to prevent the problem - I may look into that.

The lesson is - watch out for gusts of wind when you have your doors open!

Thanks
Des

Interesting!

And one hell of a design flaw there Peugeot!!!

I was puzzled as to why you can't remove the cassette with the door at 90 degrees though. I've got the Stanway and if memory serves, the rear end is identical to that of the Symbol Plus:

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I can remove the cassette on just 90 degrees with no problems?

That said, my van only just fits on the drive, so if filling or emptying the cassette at home I always pull the door to 180 otherwise I'm stuck in the back doors

Let us know how you get on with the replacement bumpstops, I can't believe the OEM ones are simply not fit for purpose, thanks bonkers

Thanks RogerThat

Yes, it looks the same arrangement. I guess it is possible to remove the cassette at 90 degrees, but I tend to open it a little wider to facilitate access. I'll try to avoid that in future, though I think a strong gust could still blow the door open from the 'soft' stop. A hard stop would work better - maybe a chain or cord which hooked on somewhere?

DesG wrote:Thanks RogerThat

Yes, it looks the same arrangement. I guess it is possible to remove the cassette at 90 degrees, but I tend to open it a little wider to facilitate access. I'll try to avoid that in future, though I think a strong gust could still blow the door open from the 'soft' stop. A hard stop would work better - maybe a chain or cord which hooked on somewhere?

No problem on the Kemerton to remove the cassette with doors open at 90 degrees when its not windy. But a few years ago, when removing the toilet cassette, a strong gust of wind did blow the open rear doors past the 90 degree 'soft' stops. The result was the door release buttons, that when pushed in allows the doors to open to 180 degrees, shot out from the door frame seating's. Both the mechanism to the buttons and the buttons themselves were damaged. The doors now open to 90 degrees only, which for me is not a problem. The story is, now I am excessively careful when opening the rear doors to gain access to the cassette, especially when its windy.

When emptying our Symbol cassette I left the locker key in the lock and went to the Elson point. After a gust of wind had shut the rear door from 90 degrees to 0 degrees I returned to discover I had a key in two halves, half inside the lock and half on the ground. Retrieved broken key from lock and now use the spare key but take care not to leave it in the locker door. The answer my friends, I was once told by Bob Dylan, is blowing in the wind, the answer is blowing in the wind! 

Martin

3 weeks ago I was stopped at traffic lights , last in a row of traffic, when an Italian tourist ran into my offside rear. This mangled only the corner bumper and side plastic moulding not the metal behind thank goodness. However when I picked the Duo up after repair I found it had further damage to the rear offside corner of the van in line with the rear window's edge. There was an horizontal scratch and a vertical crease in the previously unmarked bodywork. When all of your doors blew wide open was there any bodywork damage? I'm wondering if my damage was caused by the door blowing past 180 degrees when the  damaged corner bumper, door stop and rear side moulding were removed and the new parts had yet to be fitted. The body shop are fixing the damage as a "gesture of goodwill" but I know this did not happen in my care as the van was either on the drive or in their charge. I'd be grateful for any feedback, thanks, Smithy.

Martin, I unlocked the cassette locker door the day I picked up my Symbol and it has stayed unlocked ever since. Is there a reason I have missed for locking it every time?
I can understand if the cassette locker is on the outside but ours aren’t?
Bit worrying about the wind issue by the way, glad this was brought up and I will be extra careful from now on.

Hello Smithee

Yes, I was also worried about damage to the bodywork, but I've examined things very carefully and can find no damage apart from the faintest mark on the corner below the nearside light cluster which made contact with the glass. The impact site on the glass was very obvious since all the crazing radiated out from a single point - a bit like one of those lunar craters you see on photos of the moon.

Many thanks for the response, Smithy.