Multipoint locks · explained · Manchester
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- Stiff: £45-85
- Sheared: £60-120
- Repairs 30-90 min
- Parts on the van
If your uPVC or composite door needs the handle lifted harder than it did last year, you are not imagining it and it will not settle down. You are watching a multipoint gearbox die, and you have somewhere between a few weeks and a few months before it takes the door with it.
What is actually in your door
Lift the handle on a uPVC door and you are not moving one bolt. You are driving a steel strip the full height of the door edge, which pushes out three to seven separate locking points at once: hooks that grab, rollers that pull the door tight to the frame, and a deadbolt the key throws.
The thing doing the driving is the gearbox, a small casing about a third of the way up. It converts the handle's rotation into vertical travel. It is the only part that moves everything, it is usually zinc alloy rather than steel, and it is the part that breaks.
Why it always fails, and always warns you
Gearboxes rarely fail on their own. They fail because the door moved.
- The hinges wear. A door is heavy and swings tens of thousands of times. It drops two or three millimetres. You cannot see it.
- The hooks stop lining up. They now meet the edge of the keeps instead of sliding into them.
- The gearbox takes the strain. Every lift now forces metal past metal. That is the stiffness you feel.
- The gears wear, then shear. Usually on a cold morning, because cold metal is less forgiving.
Composite doors are worse than uPVC for this. The slab is heavier, so it drops harder and faster onto the keeps.
The stages, and what each one costs
| What you notice | What it is | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Handle slightly stiffer than it was | Door dropping, hooks binding | £35-65 |
| Needs a firm lift, every time | Gearbox under load, wearing | £45-85 |
| Needs both hands or a shove | Gears failing. Days, not months. | £45-85 |
| Handle spins, nothing happens | Sheared. Door won't lock. | £60-120 |
| Locked shut, you're outside | Sheared while thrown | £110-200 |
The whole page is really about the difference between row two and row five. Same door, same fault, four times the price and a night on a neighbour's sofa.
The dangerous version
A gearbox can shear while the hooks are out. The door is then locked into the frame at four points with nothing able to retract them. From outside, that is a genuinely awkward job. From inside, with the door shut, it is worse.
If your handle needs a shove and you are going away, get it done first. The version of this that happens at 6am with a taxi outside is the expensive one.
What not to do
- Don't force it. You'll shear it today instead of next month.
- Don't spray WD-40 in it. It's a solvent, not a lubricant. It strips what's left.
- Don't buy a gearbox online. There are hundreds of variants.
- Don't fit new hinges alone. Realignment is the point, not the parts.
What we do
Realign first: adjust the hinges, adjust the keeps, get the hooks meeting the middle again. If the gearbox has not worn too far, that alone fixes it and costs £35-65. If it has, it gets replaced and the door still gets realigned, because otherwise the new one dies the same way.
Lock repair · uPVC door lock repair · Locked out
Questions people actually ask
Why does my uPVC door only lock if I lift the handle really hard?
Because the door has dropped a few millimetres and the locking hooks are no longer lining up with the keeps in the frame. Every time you lift the handle, the gearbox is forcing metal past metal instead of sliding it home, and that force is what you feel. It is a warning, not a quirk. The gearbox is wearing every time you do it, and it will eventually shear. Caught at the stiff stage a realignment is £35 to £65 and a full service £45 to £85. After it shears it is £60 to £120 and the door will not lock at all.
How much does a multipoint gearbox replacement cost in Manchester?
£60 to £120 fitted, including the part, and it takes 45 to 90 minutes. If the door can be realigned before the gearbox has worn out it is only £35 to £65, which is why the stiffness is worth acting on. If it shears while the hooks are extended and you are locked out, it is £110 to £200 because the door has to be opened first. There is no call-out fee and the price does not change at night or at weekends.
Can I just spray WD-40 into the lock to free it up?
No, and it will make things worse. WD-40 is a water dispersant and a solvent. It will feel better for a few days because it strips out the old grease, and then it will be worse than before because there is now no lubricant at all and the residue attracts dust. If you want to lubricate a lock yourself, use a dry PTFE or graphite lubricant on the cylinder. But if the problem is a stiff handle rather than a stiff key, lubrication is not the issue anyway: the door is out of alignment and no spray fixes geometry.
Can I buy a gearbox online and fit it myself?
You can try, and most people order the wrong one. There are hundreds of multipoint variants, and they differ in backset, centres, faceplate width, hook spacing and handle spindle position. Two doors that look identical from the outside routinely take different gearboxes. Even with the right part, if you replace the gearbox without realigning the door, the new one starts dying the same day for the same reason. The failure was never really the gearbox, it was the geometry.
Is my composite door the same as a uPVC one?
Same mechanism, worse odds. A composite slab is considerably heavier than uPVC, so the hinges take more load, the door drops sooner and it drops harder onto the keeps. That means composite doors tend to go stiff earlier in their life and shear faster once they start. Everything else is identical: same gearbox types, same hooks and rollers, same fix. On Manchester's newer estates, where nearly every house has a composite front door fitted within the same few years, we see them fail street by street.
My handle spins loosely and does nothing. What's happened?
The gearbox has sheared. The handle is now turning a spindle that is no longer connected to anything, which is why there is no resistance at all. If the door is open, do not close it: once shut you have no way to retract the latch and it becomes a lockout on top of a repair. If it sheared while the hooks were extended, the door is locked into the frame at several points and cannot be released from either side, which is the version that costs £110 to £200 rather than £60 to £120.