door handle - hard to get?

Most of them are broken, so yes grab it or risk paying out the nose for a NOS one, if they're any still available.

So your lock is a Bargman l-66, there is a early style that has a Art Deco looking handle and won't work unless you replace the whole lock. Your's is the more common one, it was made in the USA, but some where along the line in the 70's they shifted production to China. You can tell the Chinese locks apart by the screws that hold the internals together, the USA locks had little hex head screw(black in color) and the Chinese had Phillips head screws (silver in color). The handle might be the only thing that is interchangeable but I am not sure, a lot of the internals are just different enough that they're do not work.

not hard to get, there is usually a couple on ebay, the problem is the price is usally stupid high for a NOS on $250.00 and up, but if keep an eye out occasionally you can find a lot better deal on one. it jut takes a while sometimes.

Door lock addendum;
Just took another look at the picture of yours and it looks like it does have the notch. VTS has had that model in the past, and if they don't you can have mine since it won't fit my door. New old stock, 2 keys, and instructions on how to replace.

Vic-- I see by looking back to remind my feeble memory, that you have the "toaster" style of Compact. There were some made with the older "Canned-ham" latches, and then they switched to the L-66 (pictured above) sometime after the model changeover to the toaster... Is yous like the one above, or is it the "twist" type latch? The interior part looks sorta like this:



The through-piece is nothing more than a piece of square stock, and the outer handle does resemble a garage-door handle.



The outer handle and the complete kits are available here:
teardroptrailerparts.com/Door_Handles__Latch_Kits.html

Or here:

www.vintagetrailersupply.com/Entrance_Doors_s/10.htm

And of course on ebay, once you know what it is you are searching for....

Sometime in the course of its life, someone changed out the lockset on the Compact I just sold, and replaced it with a strom-door latchset.  It is impossible to keep the door drawn tightly shut with it, as well as the fact that it cannot be locked.  Although it may be possible to switch to a house set, I personally would recommend against it, especially since, if all you need is the outer handle, it can be replaced for less than the cost of a home lockset.

We just bought Shasta #2 and the handle is broke on it. That's not the bad news, when I took it apart every moving part in it was missing. I got a latch bolt from VTS but that's all they had .I had to take the latch off of Shasta#1 ,open it up and see what parts were missing, then I spent an entire day in my shop fabricating parts. works great but handle still broken.