Cooler Latch Surgery

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Cooler latches sometimes end up in hard to reach spots on your raft. Here are a couple of things we’ve done to make latches easier to work with when they’re in a tight place.

We recently did a build for a customer who wanted everything to be on the same plane and tight together. This created a challenge when it came to operating the latches on their Canyon Navigator 150.

A quick bit of playing with the latch on the rig showed that if the latch was about ½ the “throw length” it could work. Also, if the latch had a flexible means of being able to pull against the latch’s tension, it would be more functional.

To help us think about how we could shorten the latch, we put the cooler on a table in the shop.

Canyon Coolers makes it so you can replace the plastic part of the latch of their 150s. You can use a metal rod or dowel the same size as the pin to press the pin out.

We then marked where we wanted to cut the latch, used a band saw for the cut, and then rounded off the corners with a sander. If you don’t have a band saw, you could use a hack saw. Pro tip - watch your fingers and wait until after playing with power tools to drink the beer you have stored in your cooler.

Next, we cut about 18” of ½” webbing to put on the latch. We then pressed the pin back into the latch and rubber latch tensioner.

Voilà - the swing space needed for the latch has been cut in half.

Another way to make cooler latches easier to get to is by drilling a small hole and then threading 2 mil cordage through. We’ve used this technique with the other style of Canyon Cooler latches as well as on Engel’s cooler latches.

Just be sure to think your whole latch surgery through prior to cutting, drilling or otherwise altering your cooler’s latches.

We hope these couple of techniques can help you come up with some of your own ideas about how to make your raft set up easier to interact with.

Enjoy your time on the river.