I'm replacing the deadbolt on my rental property with a Kwikset 909 keyless system. When i bought this house, it already had a Kwikset 909 installed, but I moved that to the back door and put an August smart lock on the front. The August eats batteries like it's nobody's business, so I decided to buy another Kwikset 909 for the front door last night. For the record, i also installed a Kwikset 909 on my house that I reside in, so i have installed this exact model deadbolt 3 separate times without issue.

When I went to install the new deadbolt on the front door of my rental property last night, I found that the spindle orientation created a conflict with the latch mechanism on the inside. The bolt backset is dead center of the hole, so I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the rotational orientation of the D-shaped spindle that connects the lock cylinder to the inside latch assembly. It is misaligned in such a way that the latch assembly reaches the end of it's range of motion when the bolt is only about half way extended.

The latch assembly uses a spring catch that can be "overridden" (for lack of a better word) to flip between either a left-side or right-side door opening configuration. Neither configuration works. One results in the bolt only opening 1/2 way. The other results in the bolt only closing 1/2 way. In my estimation, the spindle orientation is off by about 90°.

I messed around with the lock for hours last night, even completely tearing it down to the internal gears. I did not find any way to reset the spindle orientation. So today i just bought another new Kwickset 909 with the intention of returning the one I bought last night. As it turns out, this spindle also doesn't line up! But this one appears to only be off by about 40-50° instead of 90°.

So my question is: Is there's some way of adjusting this spindle orientation that I'm just completely overlooking? The user manual makes no mention of such adjustment. Is Kwikset's QC just THAT bad?

EDIT: I figured out the issue. Apparently the motorized latch resets the range of motion automatically when you do the initial programming steps. What threw me off is that the instructions clearly state to test the latch and key for proper operation BEFORE doing any of the programming steps. I guess i must have skipped this step and went right to programming when I installed this lock previously. Kwikset really ought to correct this error in the instructions or at least clarify that the bolt may not be able to run through its full range of motion until the lock has been programmed. Anyways, hopefully this post helps someone else in the future. I certainly wasn't able to find any info online for this issue.