Bjørn Madsen – Page 16 – Seattle's Maple Leaf Locksmith LLC

Your Car’s Security and Difficulty in Replacing a Lost Key

Getting locked out doesn't mean you have to abandon your car! — Standing water in this car contributed to corrosion in the ODB2 port, the only option was onboard programming the key.

There are a few ways to make a key for a vehicle if you have lost all of the working keys. Usually this relies on accessing the car’s computer through its ODB2 port. If there is a leak in your moonroof and you lost the keys to your car, don’t put it off. Give me a call before standing water forms on the floor of your car! High humidity will create corrosion in the ODB2 port among other things.

When the odb2 port gets corroded the programming equipment won’t work and it makes it more laborious to program a key into your car, or you have to try to clone your key.
Speaking of odb2 ports, they are used by high-tech thieves to steal cars. Now a company has released an odb2 port lock to prevent somebody from programming a key into your car and driving away with it while you sleep. Read about it here.

If you are interested in the technology behind keeping your car’s door locked there is a lot of information on the internet about it. The physical locks often employ wafers and a sidebar which makes them difficult to pick, though there are plenty of easily pickable locks in vehicles being produced even now. Opening a locked car door is not usually very hard if you have some inexpensive tools designed for the purpose and one can buy a set of these tools along with a manual for how to use them and which tool to use for the car they are confronted with for a cool $200 or so or a really cheap set for $20.00. These tools usually set off any car alarm though.

Recently I have read a lot of misinformation about the security of cars due to car theft. I am no expert on how to steal a car but I have a lot of experience opening locked cars without a key and usually it sets the alarm off unless you manipulate one of the door locks. If you are worried about your car being stolen you should find out if your car’s locks are easy to pick and if the car’s ignition requires a chipped key to start it. Without a chipped key that is already programmed into the vehicle, the vehicle won’t start or if it does it will only run for thirty seconds or so.

Also there is no “master key” for cars in the sense that the manufacturer made a key that will work in all cars. It would be suicide for a business to create a master key for their vehicles because it would be a short amount of time before that key fell into the wrong hands and duplicates were found for sale on alibaba.com. Even if the key didn’t fall into the wrong hands it wouldn’t take long for somebody to take their lock apart and reverse engineer the key by looking at what the key interacts with.

While there is no master key there are so-called jiggler keys that are popular with the tow-truck drivers and the vehicle repossessors. These will open lots of vehicle locks, even double sided wafer locks. If somebody used a jiggler key it would not set off the alarm. The jiggler key most likely wouldn’t start a recently made car from the last fifteen years because of its lack of transponder chip, though less expensive import vehicles like Hyundais didn’t use chips until quite recently and lots of box trucks and vans don’t use transponder chips still. If somebody used a jiggler key to get into your car they would still have to program a key into your vehicle’s computer to get it to drive away. This requires time and effort. A professional locksmith usually needs at least half an hour of time to take a door cylinder out of the door and get a key working with it and then may need more time to get some added cuts to make it work in the ignition.

If you live on a hill a criminal may not be too concerned with starting your car. They could just put your car in neutral and drag it to some other place like a warehouse where they have time to disable the car alarm. If they are familiar with the vehicle they would probably unplug the horns.

A lot of rumors have been floating around about the spoofing of keyless remotes for cars recently. This is unlikely for recent cars. There are documented weaknesses in the way keyless remotes work and the technology has been exploited by researchers but there are not known cases of criminals using these weaknesses in the wild. There may have been incidents of thieves blocking the transmission of the keyless remote with a radio jamming device which would make the car not receive the order to lock the doors, but this is less worrisome than criminals outright compromising the keyless remote encryption technology.

Some thieves have figured out they can use tasers in new and exciting ways to open car doors but this leaves evidence and isn’t widespread. If your vehicle has a combination lock on the door make sure to have that disabled ASAP as somebody who has a table of codes can and will unlock one of these doors in a few minutes. Unfortunately those locks are not sophisticated at all and don’t penalize people for putting in the wrong code too many times. A good electronic lock will disable the keypad for some amount of time if the wrong code is entered too many times. My favorite electronic safe lock can be programmed to do this for a specified number of minutes to hours.

Short story is this: if your car was stolen and it was made after 2000 somebody probably has a key to it or somebody towed it away in neutral unless the car was worth enough money that somebody with sophisticated tools and knowledge would want to steal it. When you buy a car from somebody in the same state you usually give them a piece of paper with your name and address on it and if they keep a key they can drive over to your house and unlock the car and drive away with it if they so choose which brings us to my final thought on the matter of preventing your car from being stolen.

When you buy a car from somebody and they know where you will be keeping the car it is just stupid not to reprogram the car so that the old keys don’t work. It is smart to rekey a house when you buy one for the same reason (well, nearly the same reason. Nobody is going to drive away with your house unless you live in a motorhome!). Another good idea if you have a car without an immobilizer or transponder in the key is to install a hidden kill switch. Get a club to lock your steering wheel. These things will slow somebody down and force them to examine your wiring scheme or remove your steering wheel to control the vehicle even in neutral.

If your car supports it consider getting a puck lock from slicklocks. No holes need to be drilled in your car and there are no quick easy ways to unlock these locks without a key.

A Worn Out Lock

Guess which of the three little pins in this picture is new. The customer showed me that she had to pull her key out a little to turn the lock on the front door of the historic building she lived in, a Seattle landmark from 1910 (these old buildings are a playground for locksmiths who like old locks). However her key worked great in other lesser-used entrances.
This told me that the problem was not her key but the pins in the front door’s lock, and boy howdy were those pins worn! Some of them actually had a concavity from keys sawing through them over the years. If your most-used lock doesn’t work well with your key but works well in other locks then the pins may be worn down. Have someone rekey the troubled lock to match whichever of your keys that works the best. For high traffic locks consider asking the locksmith to use nickel silver pins. Nickel silver is a harder alloy than brass and will last longer (though it will wear down brass keys faster!)
I rekeyed the lock to her key and it worked great. Who knows if it will work well for everybody else though. They are all used to rattling their keys around in the lock and there are variations in all of their hardware store duplicates. Some of the residents might notice their key works better after the lock is changed and others worse. For this situation it is a good idea to have extra keys on hand for those whose keys no longer work. Sell them copies of your key which is now essentially a first generation key.
If you have a little extra money ask the locksmith to code cut the original key and save it for making duplicates.

When I Turn My Doorknob, Nothing Happens

Do you have a doorknob that despite being unlocked won’t open the door? You checked to make sure the deadbolt wasn’t obstructing the door and pulled really hard, and looked and you can see that the latch is sticking out from the door and into the door frame? You have a broken latch, my friend.
Before you pick up the phone and call me, there is something that you can do. If you are fortunate enough to recognize this problem with the door open, simply take the old doorknob off using a philips screwdriver in most cases. Then take the latch off with the same screwdriver. Go buy a new latch either from a local store or the internet.

If the latch failed and the door is closed, the problem is slightly greater but not insurmountable. If you are locked inside and you would push the door open, try opening it with a library card. If that doesn’t work, try to unscrew the doorknob and remove it so that you can manipulate the latch and try pulling various parts of it to see if that allows you to open the door.

If you are locked outside and you would pull the door out, try bypassing the doorknob latch with a library card or similar. If you can’t open the door with a card, there isn’t a lot you can do besides look for an open window. This assumes there are no other doors that you can use to gain entry and unscrew the doorknob.

If you can’t get the doorknob off then your remaining options are few. You can either try to destroy the doorknob which may result in damage to the door or you can call me. I can say that it is usually inexpensive to repair this problem if the doorknob can be removed. If the door is closed and the problem is a malfunctioning mortise lock or the door is closed and it is the only door, the lock may be damaged and a replacement may be required. Still, the cost for me to come out and drill off a doorknob would be less than $150, replacement included.

Good luck with your broken door knob. Don’t hesitate to call!

Is Your Security System Safe?

Some alarm systems are wireless instead of wired. That means that somebody can listen into radio signals and spoof commands to the security system. Lots of systems from big companies like ADT employ wireless signals, and somebody can disarm these systems remotely with some high tech tricks.

Of course, it is also possible that somebody could disarm your system if it is wired too if they bothered to splice into the wire, but that is harder and then they would have to creep around your property. I submit that it is better to have a wired security system for this reason.

Keep Your Door From Being Taken Off Its Hinges

So you put a nice thick deadbolt on your door and you think your house is secure. Did you consider whether or not the hinges are on the outside of one of your doors? If they are, somebody could knock the hinge bolts out of your door and pull the entire door out of the frame, negating the entire installation of your lock!

If you want to keep this from happening, you have a lot of choices ranging from replacing the door so that the hinges are on the inside of the house to changing the hinges so that the bolt can only be removed when the door is open. A cheap fix is to replace the hinges on your door with a type that does not have removable hinge pins. The least expensive fix requires only one or two wood screws and a drill bit the same size as the screw’s head.

If you put a screw into the hinge side of a door so that when the door is closed the screw goes into the door frame, even without the hinge bolts on the door cannot be removed. The screw connects the door to the frame when the door is shut, like a miniature deadbolt.

To install the screw, either select a screw of a smaller diameter than the holes in your hinges and put them in the center holes of your hinges so that they stick out 3/8″ and go in the hinge holes on the other side of the hinge, or: drill a pilot hole halfway down the door but a little higher than the hinge. Install the screw so that about half an inch of the screw sticks out of the door. Carefully close the door until the screw’s head touches the door frame, and mark that spot with something. Drill another hole there, but with a different drill bit which is of slightly greater thickness than the head of the screw you put in your door. That is so when you shut the door the screw goes into the hole you made. Then if somebody takes the bolts out of your hinges and pulls on the door the screw will keep the door attached firmly to the frame, and all with twenty minutes and less than a dollar’s worth of materials.

When A Cheap Lock Breaks

Update: I edited this page to remove specific brand names because the CEO of one of the manufacturers mentioned as being cheap called me and informed me that his locks are in fact manufactured in the USA and that his company’s lock probably broke because it was installed wrong. I have reservations about why his lock broke but am giving him the benefit of a doubt.

Lots of my customers balk at the cost of a commercial leverset because they see doorknobs at the hardware store for under $50. The least expensive commercial passage leverset I feel comfortable guaranteeing is $82 retail. My Marks Survival Series leversets retail for over $500 (though I don’t think anyone actually pays that much in practice). Some leversets I don’t want to deal with can be had for much less, and the reason I don’t sell them is that they have a tendency to fail. If people don’t notice that the lock has failed and shut the door, they will either be locked out or even worse locked in as was the case for my unfortunate client today.

The reason they got locked in their office was because the builder installed leversets that were bottom dollar and one of them failed. Import Chinese locks have a tendency to fail prematurely and for no good reason. The leverset failed because it is made of cheap metal that snapped at the junction between the lockset and the latch, a part called a retractor. Usually the latch fails in cheap locks, but this lock is cheaper than usual apparently.

If a lock isn’t installed properly even a well-constructed lock will probably fail over time, so make sure to read the installation instructions or hire somebody who knows what they are doing.

So take advantage of the lesson these poor folks learned the hard way: get reasonable hardware in the first place or you may end up paying me to come out and open your door and then replace it with a decent lock you should have had on the door in the first place. A good way to find a decent lock is to see if the lock advertises a guarantee.

On the top is a good lock. On the bottom is a PDQ lock where the part that grabs the latch has snapped on both sides (circled). — On the top is a good lock. On the bottom is a poorly made lock where the part that grabs the latch has snapped on both sides (circled).

Do Not Duplicate: Who Will Copy This Key For You?

A key that says "do not copy" — Somebody wrote “Do Not Duplicate” on this key but somebody could just rub this off. Probably nobody would heed this key’s admonition anyway. If you want a Do not Duplicate key, pay fifty cents more and get an actual one with a neuter head or a restricted keyway that can’t legally be duplicated.

So you have a key that says Do Not Duplicate on it? The reason is whoever owns the property that key works at doesn’t want you to duplicate that key. In fact, they probably paid a dollar extra for the key to say this on it. If you have a good reason to duplicate that key, you should ask whoever originally gave it to you for another copy. The property manager wants to control who has this key and how many they have, and it may be for your own safety and that of others who use that building. You wouldn’t want somebody in your building to make fifty copies for his or her friends so they can use the community pool or laundromat and have all kinds of random people wandering through your building. Maybe friends of friends would also make key copies and soon your building would be overrun by random people doing who knows what.

If that person then tells you to “just take it to X locksmith, they will copy it for you, just tell them I sent you”, they are deluded. Most locksmiths won’t just copy a key that says Do Not Duplicate, because then nobody would pay an extra dollar for keys that say this on it. The whole thing would be a joke, and it doesn’t make good business sense. The DND message is not legally binding. I can legally copy these keys for anybody. I still won’t do it without proper authorization, and neither will most other locksmiths. I will only copy your DND key if you bring a letter on company letterhead explicitly stating your name and how many copies you are allowed to make. The letter must have a phone number and the person on the other end must pick up the phone and confirm who they are before I will copy the key.

I noticed while reading other locksmiths’ Yelp reviews (I have to find out how high the bar is placed!) that a locksmith in University Village apparently will copy Do Not Duplicate Keys (for a price). Multiple reviewers note that they are the only locksmith that will copy these keys. This is why property owners who really care about key control are advised to invest in controlled keyways. There will always be somebody who will copy keys, everything has a price. I have keys that people cannot take to a kiosk in a parking lot and duplicate, because he does not have access to those keys. Even if somebody offered him $200 for a key copy, he would not be able to duplicate it unless he has some sort of exotic milling machine in his kiosk and the time to replicate a blank.

The other reason to avoid using common keyways are outlined by these suggestions to circumvent the Do Not Duplicate message on a key. The good people at Metafilter suggest that putting tape over these keys will thwart the guy at the hardware store. Alternatively, a ne-er-do-well trying to circumvent this could simply cut the head of the key off and ask that it be duplicated. I copy broken keys frequently, and it isn’t hard to do. Somebody could also measure the depths of the cuts on their key that isn’t supposed to be duplicated and call a locksmith and ask them to code cut it to those depths. Locksmiths usually know how to cut keys to specific depths, if they don’t they aren’t “worth their salt”.

Is Your Patio Door Secure?

Patio doors are sometimes the easiest entry point for criminals. People leave them slightly open and think because it is not on the ground floor it is out of reach of criminals or putting a dowel in the track will deter criminals from entry. Unfortunately I have news for you: craftier criminals know how to get the dowel out of the way, and they can procure ladders. I was surprised to learn that Seattle’s own police department is recommending people put dowels in their patio door tracks to keep criminals from prying doors open. Of course this solution offers more security than not having a dowel, but I would hope that the police suggest that those who are concerned get a Charlie Bar or a patio lock with a spring-loaded bolt because it is a much better solution to the problem.

There are many ways to get in through a patio door for the criminal. Don’t worry, I am not divulging anything to criminals that they haven’t learned about in “Con College” here:

The round perforation can be knocked out, giving access to the lock mechanism.

1. They can knock out the perforation in your patio door handle and unlock the door with a screwdriver. If there is a perforated round bit of metal in the center of your sliding patio door, that is to put a lock cylinder in. If you or somebody else knocks that perforation out of the patio door, the lock becomes accessible and anybody can then unlock the door with a flathead screwdriver. To prevent this, consider getting a patio door handle without a perforation or get a lock cylinder to put in the hole that results when the perforation is knocked out. This cylinder can be keyed to match your front door and they are available in a wide number of keyways. For whatever reason these are not standard key-in-knob cylinders. They are often cheap and of non-standard dimensions. My search continues for high quality patio door cylinders of the correct form factor, but until then we must make due with these which solve a big vulnerability.

2. If the homeowner wants to keep their sliding patio door slightly open for ventilation, they will often employ a dowel to keep somebody from opening the door further than a few inches. This is a bad idea. The reason it is a bad idea is that the criminal can stick a coat hanger or other thin device between the two sliding glass panels and flip the dowel out of the way. Now the door slides all the way open. I did this once when somebody’s deadbolt malfunctioned, locking them out, and the patio door was the only other door into the condo. It worked like a charm. Worse yet, there is no sign of forced entry and your insurance company may drag its feet paying out if you have insurance for burglary. I found out that criminals actually figured out this technique for themselves. To prevent this happening, you should consider installing a patio lock or calling me to install a patio door lock.

These patio locks are great because you can drill holes for every width you want the door to be open at, and a spring-loaded bolt attached to the sliding door will drop into these holes when you allow it to. If correctly installed our burglar will not be able to pry his way in unless he uses some really big tools and not without making some noise, so you can safely leave these doors slightly open.

3. The other method criminals use to get through a patio door is by trying to get them to fall off their tracks and pushing them out of the way. This happens when the installer does a sloppy job and doesn’t make sure the door is framed in tightly. The best way to prevent this happening is also an easy and cheap fix: you run some screws in the track so that the heads of the screws sit just above the sliding door. Three or four screws spaced evenly ensure that there is no way to lift the sliding glass door out of its track. If your sliding door is really flexible and thin or maybe not installed properly, you need to get that fixed by a professional door installer (not me).

Much of the same information here is applicable to windows. Windows are usually smaller than doors so they flex less. It may therefore be okay to use a dowel in some windows. That said, there are some very cheap ways to make sure that somebody can’t open your window past a certain point without a great deal of force. I like that first link and have it on my own window. For a few dollars, I can leave my window open and know that unless somebody has a bottle jack or something they aren’t going to open the window. You can drill holes in the frame for the wingnuts to go into to make it a little harder for somebody with a jack to open your window. If somebody is willing to go to such lengths to break in to your house you must have something very valuable and it may be worth your while to invest in some bars, a security system, etc. You will probably have the money to do so if thieves are using more sophisticated methods to get into your house like glasscutters or whatever other techniques might carry over from the movies into real life crime scenarios.

If you have window sash locks you ought to consider secondary methods of locking your window, because a lot of the houses I work on have really old windows with wood that is deteriorating and the small wood screws that hold these window sash locks on are often barely grabbing onto anything. When I point this out, some people propose simply screwing the window shut. That’s fine, it will secure the window, but it is a real shame not to get a breeze. I know my plants enjoy a little breeze in the height of summer.

All of the locks I have linked to except the spring-loaded patio lock bolts and the Charlie Bar are under $4 retail and most of them install with just a Phillips screwdriver. Some install with no tools but opposable digits! There is no excuse for not ordering a few of them and improving your security because the budget for doing so is less than an hour and under $20. The sliding door is perhaps the most vulnerable entry point to your home, but it is also one of the easiest and cheapest doors to secure. The more expensive spring-loaded bolts are only about $30 retail themselves and well worth the cost if you have a patio door. So do it yourself or call me, but for goodness’ sake install a sliding door lock!

When to Replace Your Door Closer

There are two good reasons to replace your door closer if you suspect it is failing. The first and most important is security. If it fails it may not close all the way and the door may not latch and some unwanted person may enter the premises the lock on the door is meant to keep out. The second reason is that hydraulic fluid in the door closer may leak out onto the door and floor and leave a terrible stain that is impossible to get out. It also smells really badly.

The door closer’s purpose is first to close the door, and second to regulate the speed with which the door closes. It ensures that unless somebody leaves an obstruction in the doorway, the door will close. It is then a nearly fool-proof method of securing a door when that door has a latching lock on it. If the door closer is not properly configured or a gasket fails and the hydraulic fluid leaks out, the door may not close with enough force for the lock’s latch to engage, allowing people to push the door open and enter without a key.

A new door closer to replace the old one.

Bottom line is if you notice that your door is closing faster or slower than usual or barely latching shut, or if there is a sticky oily brown mess leaking out of it, it may be time to replace it in which case you ought to give me a call. My charges are a service call of $65 to North Seattle in addition to:

Labor for Replacement: $45
Parts, depending on traffic and weight of door: $120-350

Fix or Reinforce Your Door Cheaply with a Mag Plate!

Mag plates, or wrap around plates, are useful in numerous situations. Consider the unfortunate soul whose house has been broken into, or at least was attempted. The rapscallions may have used a crowbar or something to attempt to pry the door open or pry the lock off the door, leaving unsightly marks in the wood on the door and the door jamb. The marks on the door can be covered using a mag plate.

A wrap around plate covers up holes from an old lock and allows installation of a conventional tubular lock.

The mag plate covers up unsightly marks, but it also serves to reinforce the door. If we consider the door that was molested by neighborly urban youths, it may have lost some of its structural integrity during its trials. Structurally, the mag plate can reinforce the door in a retrofit situation as well.

Lots of old houses have what are called mortise locks, and they are generally really robust. They may last over 100 years with minimal upkeep and lubrication! Unfortunately, 100 years after they were installed it may be difficult to find parts for them, and they like other kinetic mechanical systems will eventually fail. The difficulty in procuring replacement parts means that it may well be less expensive to do a retrofit on the door than to fix the mortise lock. Mortise locks were constructed with few standards and the placement of various features on the lock will be different than other mortise locks.

Putting a mag plate over the holes left by the mortise lock not only covers up unsightly holes, but reinforces the structural integrity of the door. Without the mortise lock in the door there will be a large cavity, leaving perhaps 1/4 inch of wood on either side of the cavity. A swift punch or kick near this spot and the door will quickly yield a large enough hole that the perpetrator might be able to reach the deadbolt above the hole and unlock it. If there is a plate covering this spot, it will be nearly impossible for our perpetrator to force their way in.

Mag plates are pretty easy to install most of the time. You need only take the lock off the door with a Phillips screwdriver, put the mag plate over the door so the holes line up, and put the lock back on the same way you took it off. Make sure the door shuts because if the fit is tight you may need to get out your chisel and remove some wood from underneath the mag plate. You may consider calling me at this point if you are inexperienced with a chisel. If the door does close and the lock appears to be working properly, good job! You can tighten everything up, put the four screws on the mag plate, and reflect on a job well done.

Pitfalls that may occur: Make sure you get the correct size of mag plate. This requires measuring the thickness of the door, and measuring how far from the edge of the door the center of the lock is. Also decide what color you want the mag plate to be. When you go to the store, whether on the internet or in the real world, it may help if you have a picture of the door with you. Consider getting a mag plate the same color as the lock it will go under.

Secondly, make sure the mag plate is on the door tight. If it doesn’t line up with the holes perfectly when it is on tight, you may need to redrill the holes.

Third, when you install it if you are also drilling the holes, measure twice. Make sure the plate is in the correct spot and covering up everything you need it to before you drill giant holes in your door.

madsenbjorn

Author: Bjørn Madsen