Author: Bjørn Madsen

UPDATE: I made a video illustrating how to fix this problem yourself if your lock is not covered by Baldwin’s lifetime warranty or you don’t care about it. This weekend three separate  customers called about their Baldwin locks not working from the outside (though in two of the cases, they worked from the inside).  In two of these cases it was because of stripped gears made of cheap die-cast metal.  The replacement part is 5399-003-G for many of these, which are usually from Baldwin’s “Image” line.  Baldwin made some of these parts kind of weak so they released a conversion kit to replace these parts that are known to fail.

You can take the piece apart that the thumblatch interfaces with.  It has a thin piece of metal covering some gears.  The thin piece of metal is held on with either screws or little metal tabs that must be bent back.  Once you have it off you have to turn the gears 180 degrees and then put it all back together correctly.  And then alleviate the issue which caused the problem in the first place.

The important thing to know about these Baldwin parts that frequently fail is that they are covered under a lifetime warranty.  The other important thing to know about them is that you must alleviate the issue that caused them to fail in the first place.  After the part is replaced, make sure that it is really easy to use the thumblatch.  If it is difficult to use, there will be too much pressure on the gears in the lock.  This may be because the strike is installed too close to weatherstripping so that the latch binds against the strike, or it may be because the lock was installed slightly off center so that there is undue pressure on the latch.  Baldwin hardware runs on the heavy side, and if you screw it in where it hangs it will be pulling the latch down from where it should rest.  That translates to premature failure.

If you are handy with a screwdriver, take your broken thumblatch off the door and take it to a Baldwin dealer.  They can supply you with a replacement part free of charge due to the lifetime guarantee from Baldwin.  If you live somewhere more rural or don’t want to deal with it all call 800-566-1986 and describe the problem.  Baldwin will mail the parts out to you.  You can then hire somebody like me to swap the broken parts.

Good luck with your lock!

Sometimes people are shocked to find out that they can have a lost key replaced simply by having somebody who still has the key send a picture of it in text message to me.  If the code isn’t stamped on the key, the code cuts of the key can still be decoded.

I accomplish this by using a photo manipulation program that has the ability to measure distance from pixel to pixel.  I first make sure the key in the picture is perfectly horizontal.  Then I measure the distance from the top to bottom of the key where the key hasn’t yet been cut.  Then I measure the distances in pixels from the bottom of the key cuts to the bottom of the key.  If I then compare the width in pixels of the key where it is cut compared to the width where it is not cut and then multiply that ratio by the real world width of the key in inches or mm, I get a real world cut depth for that cut.  Do it five more times and you have real world depth cuts for that key and can make a pretty good copy, either by cutting with a metric card or by looking at the closest known depths for that key and cutting to those depths.

If you cut to the nearest code depths chances are that your new key will work much better than the one in the picture!  This is a great real world use of algebra if any middle school teachers out there want an application.  Using algebra in this case saves my customer at least $100 and also allows me to cut a key without putting my coat on.

For some reason people in the former USSR are really interested in getting into this website.  Somebody from Moldova even got locked out 50 times, meaning they must have tried at least 100 login and password combinations.  I don’t know why these people want to bother with this website, but the following is a list of IP addresses belonging to the scuzzbuckets:

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.