Quote Originally Posted by Pete Taran View Post
I agree with Patrick that it’s obvious that the lever cap can never tighten and loosen the way it is. I’m less sure that it is due to a miss drilled hole. It looks like to me that the hole is in the right place or the cap would not be flush on the finished side.
If you look at the pictures closely and visualize where the lever's pivot point is for each of the two cap irons, you can see that the bad one's pivot point is further "back" along the long axis of the lever. That wouldn't impact its flushness on the finished side, though it would impact the gap between the base (non-toggle, cam end) of the lever and the cap.

Quote Originally Posted by Pete Taran View Post
What I think the problem is that they missed a step in finishing the lever part of the cap. When the lever is at a right angle to the cap, there is too much material protruding. If you wanted to, 5 minutes with a file on the protruding piece would tune it right up. Clearly you shouldn’t have to do that on a new plane, but if you are tired of waiting, just take a mill file and remove the thickness between the spring and the lever when it is sprung so it looks like the one that works.
Yep, that's the "file fix" that I alluded to in post #2. It's not without downside though. If you look at the right picture you'll see that he'll have to file the entire end of the lever off, and that will create a larger (cosmetic) gap between the base of the lever and the cap when the lever is in engaged/flush position.

The more I think about this the more I think L-N may have botched a design change or mold replacement here. From personal experience as a product designer it happens to even the best teams sometimes (though far less often than to not-best teams). I'm no longer convinced that a simple machining error could move the pivot point that far. That would explain why they shipped two identically bad lever caps in a row, and are having trouble shipping the fourth one.