Bulldog GD400 Heavy Duty Garage Door Lock And Installation

 Earlier this week we completed an unusual request for a customer. The customer needed to secure his garage door with much better security than the flimsy standard garage door lock and assembly to protect substantial value in tools and inventory.

There are many options available to suggest for this type of application and I remember that the Bulldog GD400 is definitely one of the better products out there.

The unique strength of The Bulldog GD400 is it's best quality. Made from treated 3/8" (10mm) thick steel plate and using another 3/8" (10mm) thick steel plate for internal anchoring and held to the door with stainless steel hardened carriage bolts and pressure nuts, the product not only looks great but is very, very strong.

The strike plate is a 4" (100mm) long hardened steel tube that is anchored into cement.

Following see our install procedure...

The first step is to mark the holes in the door and drill pilot holes through the outer skin and into the aluminum rail that makes the internal frame of the door.

Drill a couple of holes to hold the plate to the door. We only drilled two of the four holes just to line up and level the product and prepare for the next installation steps.

Once we attached the plate to the door, at the right height, we rested the plate on the strike tube and penciled around the bottom plate.

Now that we have marked the spot for the strike tube location it is time for the hard part. Drilling a 5" (125mm) deep hole in the cement garage floor base. This is quite an older home in an older part of our region and the original builders laid a 6" (150mm) thick concrete floor with heavy gravel embedded within their mix.

Drilling the hole took 2 hours alone using a heavy masonry drill bit and hammer drill as shown below and we used a cold chisel to help with the finer hole adjustments. 

Working slowly and constantly measuring and remeasuring to maintain accuracy, and you eventually end up with the correct sized hole, to the necessary depth.

You can see how deep we were required to drill to fit the strike tube into the concrete floor

You can see the mixture of gravel in the cement in this next image.

We poured a little sand and stone mix into the hole to get the strike tube to sit at the appropriate height and then filled our hole with new cement mortar, anchoring the strike into the concrete.

We deliberately made the cement into a little hill, so that when it dried it would lessen the chance of a tripping hazard.

The end result of the fitting looks good. All that's left is the mandatory 48 hour drying time. It is a good idea to keep the application wet while it is drying, to assist with curing. 

 2 days later we returned to square up the fitting, drill the extra holes and secure the inside mounting bracket.

 The end result is a nice and square (plum) fitting that is super strong.

The completed installation shows the stainless steel hardened 7 pin tubular (Ace) cylinder locking body, that secures using stainless steel ball bearings inside the strike tube. In the first image at the top of the article, you can see a rubber cap that fits over the cylinder. This protects from rain, dirt and grease entering the cylinder and it is recommended to use it for increased product longevity.

Visit the manufacturers website in the source below to purchase.

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