My '90 I just purchased has part of the key broken off in the ignition. But it is "held" in place by the pins, and by inserting "little ol' stumpy" and turning away, the ignition still functions and the truck springs to life, thus the reason this isn't a hindrance(unless you count having to carry 2 keys on your keychain; a whole original key and little stumpy). But alas, in the interests of being fully functional, this problem has increased in priority ergo the motive to repair. Now, if I replaced the cylinder, it would leave me with still 2 keys, and would cost +$100(or so i'm told). So... If anyone knows of a slick way to convince stumpy's better half to come out, drop a line, mmkay?

 

man i wish i knew how to help you

 

try using a fine dental pick to hook part of the broken part and pull it out. failing that, any decent locksmith should be able to get the broken part out.

lee

 

Maybe you could stick something sticky onto the end of the stubby and press it against the broken part really hard and give it a few minutes to stick. Then gently pull out. The key shouldn't have too much resistance in there.

Be sure to only get the sticky stuff on the part of the stubby that will make contact with the broken key.

If afterwards the keyslot is sticky, i think a drop of wd-40 in there oughta fix it up.

 

my girlfriends dad is a locksmith and says he gets call like this often. He has a dentist pick and/or some tweasers that are real flat. If it is really far in and hard to get at, you can take the whole ing. cyl. out and do it at a bench - or bring it to a locksmith because it woulb be alot cheaper than calling one out to your truck to do it.

A friend of mine also rekeyed his truck - $100 for everything with one key ( but he did his own labour )

 

a new cylinder is maybe $30 and it takes 5 minutes to change it......

 

Superglue.

You need something small enough and flat enough to hold enough glue so that when you stick it in the ignition you can hold pressure on the broken off piece firmly - let it dry and then slowly pull out the stuck piece.

Might even try using the other end of the broken key but be very careful that you don't end up super gluing the key in the lock

 

HA! Yeah I was going to say the same thing. I've had to do this before, but it was in a door keyhole. I used 1 hairpin to push up on the pins in the lock, and 1 roughed-up hairpin with superglue on the tip. I say roughed-up because you need to clean the glaze off the metal tip and rough up the hairpin for more surface area for the glue to hold to. Just apply the sticky pin to the broken key, let it dry, and pull it out. The top hairpin will help guide it by keeping longer lock pins out of the way.

After that, you can use something like a toothpick soaked in acetone to break down glue traces left inside the lock, then graphite the lock so it works fine the next day.

 

Romad, Rain, that's good advice. I had thought of doing the superglue thing but was taken aback for obvious reasons. And I have been asking all my friends if they have any superglue, and none of them do. Hah. But i'll give it my best. Thanks, guys.
Donny

 

Start small..if you go small at first and it don't work then you can increase things a bit until it does work. If you go big to start it will either work or not...or the key may get glued in place.

Go small and conservative to start with. Prep the hair pin, apply the glue to a Q-tip and then just touch the pin to the Q-tip lightly....then see if thats enough to get the other half out. If not then increase one factor (glue or pressure...) until you get desired results - done properly it should work.

Worst case you end up flooding your lock with acetone, letting it dry and starting over...or replacing the lock anyways.

- Start small.
- Increment slowly and in small steps until you get results.
- Take pics and post your findings/methods.
- Become known for your findings methods.
- ????
- Profit (?)

 

Oh and don't let acetone get on ANY treated/painted/plastic surface you like to look at. It's eats anything petroleum or nylon based.