Neat Trick To Prevent Lockouts

[justsomeguy]

I recently got one of those little lock boxes that real estate agents use, you know the type that hangs from the door knob of the house? There's a combination on the front, and inside there's room to hide several keys. I have one at the side of my house attached to the natural gas pipeline. There are also some lock boxes that can be attached with screws to a post. Of course, this will only work if you live in a house. I'm not sure this would work in a high rise apartment building!

But you could also put a spare key to your van in that lock box, so if you're locked outside, you have a key to your house and your van. They're weather resistant to rain, but I don't think they'd hold up to road salt used in the winter in the rust belt in case you're thinking of mounting one of these under your van somewhere.

[tedanderson]

People typically steal valid license plates and then they sell them on the black market to people who otherwise can't register their car as a result of outstanding fines or some other major problem.

Typically what the thief will do is steal a set of tags from an airport parking lot or some other place where there is long term parking or vehicle storage. While the victim is away from their car, he sells the tags and it "buys" the accomplice some time to get back and forth to work long enough to make a few bucks until they can get their affairs in order.

Unfortunately, most times they get a little too comfortable. And when the tags finally get reported stolen, smokey pulls them over and they get into BIG trouble.

How do I know this? I had a coworker who did it thinking that he was smarter than the cops.

[TDMobile]

WOW!!!! I am so glad that when I travel, it's usually IN the Astrofarivan rather than parking it. Whew!

[tedanderson]

And the thing that's REALLY scary is that sometimes they will steal your tags and then SWAP them with another set of stolen tags. And if you aren't paying attention and/or have no reason to suspect anything, you'll go on with life without worries until YOU get nailed by the cops. But it's somewhat unlikely that you will get into serious trouble if you have your registration which will serve as proof that there are valid tags associated with your car.

But as far as lockouts go, one thing that I am discovering is that many older Gen 2 vans and other GM vehicles that are on the double-cut key system can be easily opened using another GM double-cut key. Over time the lock wears out and it has more tolerance for keys that are similar.

I was doing sub work for this guy who has a bunch of A/S vans in his back yard and one of his employees was using his own key to go into all of the other vans while he was trying to find me a ladder to use. At first I thought that these vans might have been part of a fleet but they were of different years. Some were Astros.. others were Safari vans.

Then the guy explained to me that his key didn't work all of the vans and it didn't work in the ignition of any of them except his own.

So I tried my Gen 2 key on another van and sure enough, with enough shifting and jiggling, the lock opened.

[TDMobile]

By double cut, do you mean that both side of the key have the same pattern? I'm not a locksmith, so I don't have the lingo down