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Customer reported an access controlled door that would not lock. The door was remotely released by a button operating an electric strike. Although the door could be unlocked remoted it was necessary to walk to the door lock it closed every time.

If you know what you’re looking at you can tell why the lock shown below would not close without intervention. The lock is not designed for use with an electric strike. It is a Chubb 3R3F, which is a variant of the Chubb 3G110 detainer lock. These locks are unusual that they use a system of linkages between the bolt and the levers. The bolt stump does not directly locate into the levers. They are one of the hardest mortice locks to pick and give very little feedback.

We attended a call to an industrial unit near Forest of Dean. The new steel doors had recently been fitted (not by us), with 8 locking points into the frame. When the workers tried to enter for work they were unable to open the door. No keys would turn fully. They were locked out. This was the only entrance.

The mechanism inside the door had broken. The mechanism could not be freed with the lock in place. The only way to remove the lock was to cut some parts of the lock. Once the lock was removed were were able to withdraw the steel locking bolts back inside the door.

Ideally a locksmith would gain entry without having to destroy the lock. However, in cases where a lock or mechanism is broken there is often no alternative but to remove the lock using special methods. In this situation a new lock was fitted, a faulty bolt removed and the door was then fully operational.

We were asked to achieve non-destructive entry to a property fitted with this British Standard 5 lever lock. This make and model isn’t that common around here. Fortunately it’s easy to tell what this lock is by looking in the keyhole. Although branded MHS it is actually manufactured by Avocet.

If you look at the bottom of the faceplate above you will see “BS3621 1980”. The latest version of BS3621 is 2017, which is much more stringent than the 1980 iteration. The most significant difference is length of bolt throw. Modern locks will have the BS kite mark on the faceplate. Other specifications in the BS are resistance to sawing attack, minimum resistance pressure to bolt being forced back in, and minimum number of key differs.

The distinctive cut out of the hardplate and the flared keyway are unique to this lock. Most of the levers have 1 or 2 anti-pick notches.

If you have lost your keys or locked yourself out of your house, locked your keys in your car / boot anywhere in the Forest of Dean, Ross on Wye and surrounding areas give us a call and speak to a locksmith.

Very often car remotes can become damaged, or just start to fall apart. The buttons on the circuit board are particularly prone to failing, especially the older type with the rubber centres. The ceramic centred buttons are much more reliable. Often the buttons will simply crack the solder joints and fall off.

It is normally cheaper to repair a remote than replace it. Often you can do this DIY, especially if the PCB and chip are intact and it’s just the outer shell that need replacing. You can buy most remote shells for £5-15 and swap the internals over yourself.

In this example above not only is the outer shell broken but the button itself is damaged. The customer could still use the vehicle because it could be opened manually on the key, and the transponder chip was still recognised by the immobiliser.

Above is a remote for a Porsche Boxster somewhere in the Forest of Dean. The customer couldn’t get into the vehicle at all because not only had the unlock button fallen to bits, but the locks were broken so it wouldn’t open on the the key. A replacement button was soldered on to enable to customer to drive home until the locks were repaired.

90% of the time when called to a vehicle with keys locked in the car / boot it will be raining. This case of keys locked in the boot in Ross on Wye was no exception to the rule.

It was dry when taking photos of the vehicle before touching it. By the time tools touched the car it was a cloudburst for the next few minutes.

We open vehicles without damage. We have the correct tools for the purpose, and the knowledge how to use them. We do not bend doors open, stick bits of coat hanger or string down the side of the door, or try any of the YouTube fantasies such as half tennis balls. That’s just going to damage or bend your door, perhaps shatter your window, or at best make you look a wally.

If your car has been deadlocked then no amount of fishing about with bits of wire down the side of the door will open it. You need an auto locksmith to make a non destructive entry, or find yourself a brick and a new window.

A few weeks ago I was called to cut a replacement car key somewhere in the Forest as it had snapped. It was a weekend evening. One of the national breakdown companies was sending somebody from Luton to cut the key – at a cost of £600!!!! The customer was required to expected to pay this up front and the breakdown company would subsequently reimburse them. The customer understandably rang around locally instead and cancelled the guy coming from Luton.

Last week I opened an car for a customer who had been locked out, standing in a supermarket car park for 10 hours. 2 patrols from a national breakdown service had been unable to open the boot to retrieve the keys and they had sent a recovery truck to take it away. Due to being a cabriolet there was no boot release inside the main body of the car. The boot had probably never been opened with the key since the day the car was built. It’s always worth using your metal key to open the doors every so often, just to stop the locks from seizing.

Here is an additional remote we provided for a nearby dealer. On this era VW/Audi/Skoda the transponder chip that the immobiliser checks for is separate from the remote PCB. Although it is possible to re-use 2nd hand remote parts on these, it can be a false economy and we will normally only use new components.

Replacement car key/remote supplied, cut and programmed for a Mitsubishi L200. Less than half dealer price (and considerably cheaper and quicker than it would have been if the only key had become lost).

With many Asian vehicles a spare key must be a remote key. A simple transponder (chipped) key may not cancel the alarm or stop the hazards flashing if it has been locked using a remote. With European/US vehicles a programmed key will almost always cancel the alarm if it is put in the ignition and turned on. Therefore Euro/US vehicles can just have a cheaper transponder (chipped) key as a backup spare.

Shortly before midnight we were called to secure a UPVC house door. Their only key had snapped in the lock and the door could not be secured.

This was all caused just because of the broken springs in the handles. The weight of the handle was causing them to droop rather than them returning to centre. As a result the mechanism hadn’t set correctly and it took excessive force to turn the key.

Because the customer had been ignoring the droopy handle it ended being a lot more costly than it would just to change the springs. A droopy or floppy handle might just look unsightly, but it could potentially cause your entire door to be jammed shut, or unlockable. Luckily in this case the key broke before the multipoint mechanism did.

A repair or adjustment to a UPVC door or window is almost always more economical than a complete replacement.