Articles based on the Automotive side of locksmithing.
Do you drive a Lexus with a remote head key? Have you found out how fragile these things are yet? Broken Lexus keys come into our shop all the time! They just love to break where the little ‘T’ shaped laser cut key blade attaches to the plastic remote top. Did the engineers honestly think that […]
Peterbilt keys up till now have been very easy to duplicate. A while back a customer that works for our local Peterbilt dealer came into our shop for a spare key to one of their 2013 Peterbilt 220’s. The keys were significantly different than the 2012 and down vehicles and we noticed that the key […]
Laser cut keys have been around for a long time but were only used on high-end cars like Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Recently these keys have been used on very common domestic car brands like Ford and Chevrolet. Hyundai and KIA have even started implementing laser cut keys! The term laser cut is an industry term that […]
We have a bunch of people call and come into our shop asking if we will cut and program the key they bought on eBay. The short answer is ‘Yes’ we do cut and program eBay keys. The major difference between our keys and eBay keys is that when you buy a key from us, […]
In 1986 General Motors introduced the Vehicle Anti-Theft System (VATS) on the Corvette. This system quickly made its way into many other General Motors vehicles as a standard feature. The VATS system can be easily identified by looking at the key. In VATS equipped vehicles there is a visible black resistor called a ‘pellet’ in […]
A Short History of the Ford PATS 1 System Ford began putting transmitter-responder or ‘Transponder’ chips into their keys in 1996 with select models. This system was called the Passive Anti-Theft System (PATS), and quickly became a standard feature. Ford owners on the PATS 1 system can program in their own keys if they follow […]
