How to Code a New Vehicle Ignition Lock Cylinder Step by Step Guide

Hi, I’m Mike from 1A Auto. We’ve been selling auto parts for over 30 years!

In this video, we'll be key coding an ignition cylinder. Yours maybe a little bit different, but the procedure should be the same for most cylinders. If you need parts for your vehicle, click the link in the description and head over to 1aauto.com. This is our old lock cylinder, this is our new lock cylinder from 1A Auto. It's going to come with this and all the keys and all these springs and the directions. All right.

First thing we want to do is set this up on a nice clean surface, so that we're going to be able to see everything when we take it apart. We're going to set up our bags over here, our springs and our lubricant. We're going to cut open the springs, take those out. And then we'll cut open these bags, we'll leave everything in the bags, like that. We're going to take out the tumblers, one at a time.

We're going to write them down and when we do that, we are going to put the new one's in, one at a time and check it with the key. So, to get these tumblers out, you can see the side that has a kind of like a circle right there, the opposite of this side right there. So that is the direction the tumblers going to come out.

So, I need to flip it over. We’re going to push with a straight pick down and it's going to pull the tumbler out. You can grab it and pull it out. This one's very worn. You see that, it looks like it says the number three on it right there. So we'll put that aside and we're going to write down three for the first number. Then we're going to come over here. Grab a spring. We're going to stick the spring down in that round part of the slot. We're going to grab a number three tumbler and push it in like that in the first slot and going to push it down.

Then as you can see, this little lock, that's what actually locks the cylinder. We're going to take our key and we're going to try it and see if that goes down. Just like that, it went down. So now, we're going to do that same thing, same procedure with each one, one at a time. Push down like that, pull that tumbler out, and that looks like a number one. And then, see how this side, the circle was on that, this one we're going to flip over and the circles on this side. Stick that in and we'll get our number one tumbler and push that down.

We'll do the same. Recheck it and that went all the way down. So repeat those steps for the rest of the tumblers. Now you can see that our key works. The lock goes down when I push in the key all the way. You can see all the tumblers moving, when I pull it in an out. Then we're going to take and put the grease all on here and on the other side. And it's ready to go back in.

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