Josh-the-Locksmith
25 Years Experience
Austin, TX
Male, 46
I've been a locksmith since 1998. I did automotive residential & commercial work from 1998 to 2008. From 2008 to 2018, I did some residential, but mostly commercial work. I have been project managing & estimating since 2018. I used to locksmith in the Chicago area, now the Austin area.
Well there's no magic tricks. You can buy a tryout set of common "skeleton keys" online, see if one of them works; or take it to a local lock shop and let them either make a key or open it.
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Try squirting some WD40 into your trunk lock, run the key in and out of the lock a bunch of times. Locks get corroded fairly quickly when they are not used.
Aside from that, you could have a locksmith come out or you can go into a shop. They can get in 1 way or another. Worst case, drill out the lock & replace it.
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We don’t offer that service at our company.
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Most of the time they just bring those to walk-in shops. But there has been a few situations where it was a chest, armoire, small safe, something like that.
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Not sure what you mean by “needing a certain amount of cuts”. I haven’t done any automotive in 12 years. In fact, it got to be such a pain, the company I work for even quit doing mobile automotive work. Seems like locksmiths either go full in automotive, or none at all. It takes a lot of resources and money due to expensive machines and services. Also, more and more car manufacturers are doing proprietary keys and fobs leaving locksmiths with no options. This is a big disservice to customers, because it means keys will cost a fortune.
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I think most deadbolts have a range of 1-3/8” to 1-3/4” thick doors. I would recommend going to schlage.com or kwikset.com & looking at their electronic deadbolts, look at the Specifications section on the product page. It should tell you the door thickness range. If it’s any thinner than 1-3/8”, it won’t work. You would need some kind of spacer to space out the lock on both sides of the door. I personally think Schlage makes a better lock than Kwikset.
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No, you can’t program any key for any car using the vin. There is nothing in a vin that tells you anything about the key.
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