Patio door locks me outside, mortise lock help?

I have a mortise style lock on my patio door, we have had a problem with the lock lever falling down when shutting the door semi-hard,
Recently my 8 year old could be heard grunting from the kitchen, "IT WON'T CLOSE"!,... followed by, "OOPS, it broke"!

My door handle just said "Made in New Zealand", apparently a rare size 4-15/16". I found only 1 option at home depot, and they wanted $86 plus tax,...found on amazon for exactly half.
When putting on the new handle, I sprayed grease in the mortise to make sure it was working good.
The new handle is much smoother, and therefor the latch easily closes when shutting the door.

Is there a way around this? they should have designed these locks where the up position would be lock,...on second thought, can the mortise mechanism be reversed?
Thanks for any help.
Joe

 

I looked at the Home Depot model you got, and it looks like, while the inside handle is handed for Left or Right sliders, the actual lock case looks to be reversible, which would reverse the lock-unlock direction. But, if what you got looks just like the HD model, it has a thumb-turn inside rather than a lever, and so, not subject to gravity influencing it. At any rate, there's supposed to be a spring-loaded detent mechanism to hold the latch in the unlock position, but usually these lock cases are stamped together at the factory, so very difficult to take apart and modify. There may be a separate detent in the thumb-turn, don't know.

 

thanks for the reply,
Do you think it's possible the Mortise mechanism could just be warn out, and a new 1 would be stiffer, which would make it less likely for the lever to lower when shutting the door?

 

Probably so, as those locks were not really designed for heavy use. I see the model from HD has (2) hooks, as opposed to the more common single hook, which is theoretically a security improvement, but back when I was doing residential work, those sliding patio door locks never offered much resistance to forced entry; we always recommended a "Charlie Bar" and top pin.