Young Gun Tip#133

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TrailBeast

AKA Mopars4us on Youtube
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Did you know?
If you have an ignition key that fits, but it won't work on your door locks you can pop this little cover off and dump the springs and tumbler pins out of it.
At this point your key will turn the lock, but unfortunately any key will.
(Or even just a small screwdriver will)

Here's the trick.
Put your key in the lock and drop a pin back into one of the holes.
If the key will turn the lock, and then the lock will not turn with the key out, then continue to the next pin.
If not, try a different length pin until the lock only turns with the key in the lock.
Keep doing the above until you have a few pins in the lock, put the springs in where the pins went in and snap the cover back on.

Now you have an ignition key that locks and unlocks the doors also.
All free except a little of your time.
 

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That's whay I love to pick up any door or trunk cyliner that's relatively easy to get. Even with all those extra pins, sometimes I can only manage to get 4 of the 5 pins in a cylinder to work, but that's better than nothing.

Be sure to keep the smaller top pins with their repective lower pins, although I've seen some worn pins work better with a slightly longer/shorter combo.

I use cardboard egg packages to keep my pins and springs organized.

...and somewhere on FABO/FBBO is a very detailed how to with lots of pics.
 
Bottom pin and top pin are matched set, in other words a shallow called #1 cut in key requires a short bottom pin (with tapered end), and a long top pin (end with little tit pointing up to receive spring). All pairs of bottom & top pins, numbers 1 through 5, have the same combined height, and must be kept as a pair, or spring binding will result if too tall or spring being captured in rotating plug if stack too short.

A better way to perform a back yard repining is to compare both keys to identify is any depth of key cuts are the same between the two. Once several same height cuts are identified, dump only one chamber at a time, replacing dumped pins with the correct pair need to allow replacement key to turn. Chances are great that only two or three cuts will be the same, so use those, and leave the remaining chambers empty.

This is not the best way to secure your car, as the number of other cut keys able to operate that lock increase dramatically.

A better solution would be to spend a few bucks, and have a locksmith re-pin the lock with fresh pins and springs which will make for a smoother operating, longer lasting lock.

003.jpg
 
I always felt that if someone is shoving another Mopar key in your lock, then they are probably going to end up doing whatever they were trying to do in the first place.
Door locks really only keep someone from just grabbing the door handle in a parking lot and getting in your car.
 
Back "in the day", whenever me or one of my buds got a new ride, we'd all have to try any existing keys to see if they worked. Sometimes they did, and sometimes not what you'd expect. My 86 Daytona key worked in a 73 Challenger!

I used to know the different possible cut combos, and Mopar was dead last with like 1 in 400 or something, where GM was 1 in 20,000 (don't hold me to those).

...as stated previously, you can almost always get three, and often four.
 
Nerd department:

GM six wafer and Chrysler five pin cylinders have the same theoretical different key combinations per pin stacks. In reality Chrysler has more combinations per pin stack due to GM cut protocol. That being said, a GM lock is much more resistant to a wrong key working in it due to its side bar design where Chrysler is a Yale pin tumbler design.

Yale pin tumbler locks are more susceptible to accepting incorrect keys if lock has excessive wear. Pin tumbler locks are generally easily picked, where GM’s sidebar wafer locks are very resistant to manipulation.

To calculate the different key cut combinations of a lock, one multiplies the number of depth cuts (five in both cases), and number of pin stacks or wafers. So in this example 5x5x5x5x5= 3125, and Chrysler used two different keyways one for ignition & doors, and one for trunk & glove box.

GM cannot have a more than a four depth difference between adjacent key cuts. In other words there are 5 different depths used labeled as; 1,2,3,4,5, 5 being deepest, and 6 wafers. 5x5x5x5x5x5=15625 theoretical combinations; however a 1 cut cannot be used adjacent to a 5 cut. This 1 & 5 convention considerably reduces the theoretical available pinning to around 15625 (3/5)= about 9000 combinations available with a GM side bar lock. GM overcame this deficiency by using different keyways using the same pining combinations. A different key way means that an “A” key blank won’t slide in to a “B” key way; GM used four different keyways for ignition, and four more for door locks for a total of eight over many years into the early nineties.

This is why someone else’s Chrysler key is more apt to work in your friend’s Mopar, than a GM key will cross work in some other GM car.
 
Meanwhile, the thief just says "eff it" and.........................

Man-breaking-into-a-car-001.jpg
 
I was trying not to say that Del. :D
But that's the way it is, and Personally I'd rather have my stereo stolen than a broken window.


Meanwhile, the thief just says "eff it" and.........................

Man-breaking-into-a-car-001.jpg
 
Hey I always lock my ragtop when the top is down for peace of mind… LOL
 
I knew someone would have the real math.

I always said "there's nothing in my classic car that's worth more than a window".
 
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