When I was asked to do this article, I sat down and thought about all of the changes in lockout tools that I’ve seen during my career. In the process of thinking about that, I plugged some numbers into a calculator and I discovered much to my horror, that this past March marked my 40th year as a locksmith! That was a hard number to swallow, but I know that the numbers don’t lie, so this article comes from over 40 years of personal experience that also includes working on numerous antique vehicles.
Believe it or not, many old vehicles simply did not have door locks. I currently own a 1959 Austin Healey Sprite that was built that way, and in my youth, I owned several original Mini-Coopers that had no door locks. My Sprite doesn’t even have an exterior door handle. If the top is up, you simply slide the “side-curtain” window open and reach inside to pull the cable that releases the door latch. The Mini-Coopers were very similar, except for the fact that they were hardtop vehicles.
Some of the vehicles of the 1930s and 1940s had locking doors, but they were generally the higher end vehicles. The early locking systems were completely different from what we have today, so naturally the unlocking tools were different too. As vehicles and the locking systems they used evolved, so did the tools that were used to defeat them. Let’s take a look at some of the early locking systems and the tools that were used.
Vent Window Tools
One feature that was incorporated into almost every hardtop vehicle in the early days was the vent window, sometimes called a vent wing or quarter glass. These small windows near the front of the door could be pivoted so that part of the window extended outside the vehicle and part inside. The position of the window could be set so that fresh air from outside could be directed into the vehicle without allowing a lot of rain inside on rainy days. This style of vent window has almost completely disappeared on modern vehicles. I suspect that part of the reason we no longer have vent windows is due to the fact that so few people smoke today, coupled with the fact that virtually every new passenger vehicle is equipped with air conditioning.
The early vent windows used a lever system that was easy to operate. The problem was that it was also very easy to operate from outside the car with a screwdriver or a piece of clothes hanger wire. Soon, latches were introduced that caused the lever to lock into place in the closed position automatically. Most of these latches were controlled by a push button at the pivot point of the lever. From the inside, in order to open the vent window, the user pushed in on the button and rotated the lever at the same time. In order to defeat this type of latching lever, most locksmiths used two “L” shaped tools; one to depress the button and one to rotate the latch.
The first car-opening tool set that I ever saw was at the shop where I started as an apprentice. I never knew who made them, or what they were actually called, but we referred to that set of tools as “VW Tools.” There were five or six tools in the set, all made from flat strips of chrome plated steel. Each tool had a loop on the end that was used as a handle and the rest of the tool was bent into various shapes. The flat steel was pretty easy to insert between the window and the weatherstripping. The general idea was to use one tool to operate the locking mechanism and a second tool to operate the lever itself. In their day, they unlocked a lot of cars.
Locking mechanisms on the vent windows evolved in different ways to try to defeat this type of attack. VW went to a knob on the latch that had to be rotated and GM started using a latch that was essentially a tiny spring-loaded barrel-bolt. Eventually, things settled out to a relatively simple latch mechanism with a push-button in the center being used on most domestic vehicles. It was that uniformity that allowed me to introduce the TT-1006 vent window tool in 1989. That one tool could be used with one hand to handle most of the vent window latches used by GM and Chrysler as well as a few from Ford.
Long Reach Tools
Some people seem to think that the current generation of long reach tools is something new, but in fact, long reach tools have been around as long as cars have had locks. I once saw an ad in a locksmith magazine from the 1930s that showed a long reach tool in action. This tool though was not inserted between the door and frame. It was designed to be inserted through the opening around the clutch or brake pedal in the floorboard. The tool was then used to operate the inside door handle or roll the window down far enough to reach inside.
Many older two-door vehicles including the venerable old VW Beetle had a more or less fixed rear window that could be cantilevered open an inch or so at the rear. Older long reach tools were often used through this opening. Even if the window was latched, you could often use the same type of tool that was used on vent windows to release the latch. Years before I became a locksmith I used this technique to unlock a friend’s VW. Once we popped the latch open on the rear window, I reached inside with a pool cue and flipped the latch on the front vent window open, even though it was one of the type that had the knob that had to be rotated. The latch was covered in blue chalk when I was finished, but it worked.
Inserting a long reach tool inserted between the door and frame was rarely done by professionals of the time simply because there were much easier methods. In addition, the felt or soft rubber weatherstripping could be easily damaged, and the doors were simply not built as well as they are today. Those earlier car doors would be easily damaged by today’s methods. The resilience of today’s car doors comes mainly from the side-impact safety standards that are now required by law.
Slim Jims
In order to understand how the original Slim Jims were designed to operate, you need to understand how many of the early door locks worked. When the door was locked, the outside handle became disabled. Most of these vehicles had a lock cylinder built into the push-button control on the outside handle. The lock cylinder operated a cam on the back of the push-button that engaged the latch mechanism. When the key was turned to the lock position and removed, this cam would be pointed away from the latch and when the button was pushed, the cam would miss the latch and nothing would happen. On these vehicles, if you knew what you were doing, a Slim-Jim could be inserted into the door and placed against the back of the lock button so that when you pushed in on the button, the Slim-Jim would take the place of the cam and actuate the latch.
On later vehicles with locks that were separated from the latch, a Slim Jim could also be used to operate the lazy cam on the back of the lock. But you may wonder why did the lock have a lazy cam in the first place? (If you are unfamiliar with the term, a lazy cam is a lock pawl that is not rigidly attached to the lock plug. It can be moved from the locked to the unlocked position without having to have a key in the lock.) If all of the linkages between the lock cylinder and the inside lock control were rigid, the key would have to be in the lock in order for the system to move. But since the lock plug doesn’t move unless there is a key inserted, something has to “give” in order for the system to work. The early designers adopted the simple solution, which was also the cheapest, and designed the “lost motion” into the lock cam, which is often called the pawl.
This “lazy cam” design was used for decades and a slim-jim was the perfect tool to take advantage of it. Then, in the late 1970s, the auto industry bowed to pressure from insurance companies to make vehicles harder to break into. The obvious solution was to move the lost motion in the lock system to the latch, or some other part of the system that would be harder to attack. In 1977, Ford adopted a new latch mechanism that allowed for a rigid lock cam. In a brilliant move, they also adopted a plastic snap-on lock pawl at the same time. Locksmiths all over the country soon learned to deal with the new system, but the slim-jim jockeys went merrily on their way disconnecting linkages left and right. The plastic cams eventually went away but occasionally, I still run into someone who thinks that a “slim-jim will unlock anything.” When I hear this, I just smile and nod, knowing that he will be generating work for me in the future.
Please don’t get the idea that I’m saying that slim-jims are useless to real locksmiths. I have one in my kit and I still use it occasionally. Very often on a classic vehicle, there is no better tool to use. In the hands of someone who knows how to use the tool, it can still be very effective. Most slim-jims have a pair of notches near the end; these notches can be used to manipulate linkage rods quite nicely if you know how to use the tool. By placing a bend in the tool, you can use a slim-jim to grasp and lift vertical linkage rods. All you have to do is position the tool alongside the rod with one end of the notch on the inboard side of the rod and the other on the outboard side. Pulling on the tool will usually lift the linkage rod easily. By inserting the tool at an angle, to attack horizontal linkage rods, you can also use the tool to push or pull linkages.
Unfortunately, many of the people who buy their slim-jims from discount automotive tool outlets think that the tool is supposed to inserted into the door and worked like a butter-churn until the car magically unlocks. Those folks may mean well, but they have no idea of the damage they are inflicting while they are using the tool. Then again, you have the would-be thieves that simply don’t care. Either way, the result is usually disconnected linkages and/or damaged wiring inside the doors.
Rod Grabber & Under the Window Tools
In the 1980s, under increasing pressure from insurance companies, the auto manufacturers started making the linkage rods inside the doors harder to attack. They went about this in two different ways; either they added guards over the linkage rods, or they placed the linkages in such a way that they were effectively hidden behind braces and other structures inside the doors. This led to the development of two different types of tools that I call general purpose tools and specialty tools. General purpose tools were designed to allow the user to grasp and manipulate linkage rods on a variety of vehicles. Specialty tools were designed to take advantage of a specific weakness on certain vehicles, either because the linkages were so well shielded, or to allow for quick and clean entry.
An example of general purpose tools would be the Tech-Train 1003 tool or the Z-Tool®. These tools were developed independently and were introduced almost simultaneously early in 1988 (February and April respectively). Neither tool is a copy of the other, but they were both designed to deal with the same lock systems. The TT-1003 tool was specifically designed around the 1988 GM full sized pick-up and the smaller GM S-10 trucks. Both vehicles had well protected horizontal linkages and window seals that fit much tighter than previous vehicles. The long end of the TT-1003 tool was designed around the full-sized GM trucks and the small end was for the S-10. But, either end of the tool can be used to unlock hundreds of other vehicles that have similar linkages.
An example of a specialty tool would be the Tech-Train 1005 Camaro / Firebird tool. That tool was designed to quickly unlock the third generation Camaro and Firebird vehicles made from 1982 – 1992. It was inserted through an opening under the door handle and rotated to move the horizontal linkage rod forward to the unlocked position. Numerous specialty tools were designed by different manufacturers during the 80s and 90s to unlock vehicles such as the Porsche 928, Astro vans, Toyota trucks, Volvo 960, Hyundai Santa Fe, etc.
As the linkages and shields made vehicle unlocking more difficult, the tools also adapted to the situation. Then, in the 1988, GM introduced the Chevrolet Beretta and redesigned the lock system on the Cadillac Sedan Deville. The linkages on both vehicles were virtually encapsulated in a sheet-metal enclosure. This made unlocking those two vehicles almost impossible to unlock with existing tools. Believe it or not, one tool company actually recommended forcibly disconnecting the linkage and then taking off the door panel to reconnect the linkage after the vehicle was unlocked!
Late in 1988, HPC introduced two revolutionary tools to address these issues: the “Beretta Tool” and the “Caddy-Killer.” Both of these tools worked in a totally new way; they went into the door cavity, under the base of the window, and then back up inside the vehicle. Once the tip of the tool was free inside the vehicle, it could be used to operate the inside lock controls just as if you were in the car. Since then, hundreds of different “under-window” tools have been introduced. I’ve even called them the “slim-jim of the 90s,” because they were being used so indiscriminately.
As useful as under-window tools are, they have lots of drawbacks. If the car was equipped with after-market window tinting film, you could pretty much count on scratching the film. And sometimes the tools will hook over a structure inside the door panel in such a way that only way to get the tool free was to remove the door panel. In addition, if you got the tool inside the vehicle and still couldn’t unlock the car for some reason, it is extremely difficult to get the tool back out of the door. Despite its limitations, the under-window tool became the workhorse vehicle entry tool of the 1990s.
Long-Reach Tools
In 1997, the new Cadillac Sedan Deville featured an unheard of new safety device – a side impact airbag mounted inside the door. Shortly thereafter, BMW, Mercedes, the Cadillac Catera and others had airbags mounted inside the doors. There soon developed an urban myth that people had actually been killed by attempting to unlock these vehicles with a slim-jim. The rumors were completely unfounded, but they still persist today. (In fact, there is a website done by some truly clueless people that claim that side impact airbags can be deployed by eating a Slim-Jim while driving!) The real danger of unlocking a vehicle with side-impact airbags mounted in the door is that you could damage or disconnect the system so that the airbag might not deploy in an accident. For that reason, I have always strongly recommended that locksmiths avoid putting tools inside the door of a car equipped with door mounted airbags.
All of this side-impact hype led me to start working on ways to use a long-reach tool more effectively. The problem was finding a way to spread the opening between the door and the frame without doing any serious damage to the vehicle. Naturally, I wasn’t the only one working on this problem, but I had a system that worked ok that I was trying to perfect. Then one day I got a phone call from a friend of mine in Dallas by the name of Bob Womack. He had a long reach system that he wanted me to market for him. When he sent me a sample of his system, I scrapped my ideas and worked out a deal with Bob. I bought the idea from him and paid him royalties on the sales for five years. That system became known as the Jiffy-Jak Vehicle Entry System and we first introduced it at the ALOA show in 1999.
At that first show I had a Toyota Camry on the show floor that I must have unlocked 300 times. Locksmiths stood three deep watching as I demonstrated the tool. By the second day of the show, some of the other manufacturers were telling locksmiths that “no professional would ever consider using such a tool.” But, within six months all of those competitors had a long-reach too of their own on the market. For the next three years we simply could not make the Jiffy-Jaks fast enough, and they were on constant back-order. I feel pretty sure that the Jiffy-Jak was one of the main reasons that Lockmasters, Inc. bought my business in 2003.
Today, almost all vehicle entry tool sales are for long-reach tools. And unfortunately there are lots of really cheap and shoddy long-reach tools on the market. The result is that I now often hear people say that “the Jiffy-Jak is the only tool I use!” This always makes me cringe because I know that there are a LOT of vehicles out there on which I would never use the Jiffy-Jak. I have seen hundreds of damaged doors passing through the auction that I service. I have also witnessed people doing terrible things to car doors with tools such as chainsaw wedges, large screwdrivers, claw-hammers and even crowbars!
The fact is that there is a place for traditional tools and a long-reach tool. I can unlock a Hyundai Santa Fe made from 2001 – 2006 with my TT-1027, with absolutely no damage quicker that you could possibly wedge open the door for a long-reach tool. The same is true for lots of other vehicles. But as I’ve said in my advertising, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
Future Tools?
My crystal ball doesn’t work any better than anyone else’s, but I was asked to give it a shot anyway. As you may already know from news reports, there are some new tools already being called “black boxes” in use by the bad guys. (http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/02/27/car-thieves-break-into-cars-by-hacking-them-with-black-box/) From what has been learned, they fall into two types, a “Universal Keyless Entry” and a power window remote activator. There are numerous security camera videos of people using these black boxes to unlock cars. In my opinion, wireless security is an oxymoron; if you have a wireless system, if someone hasn’t already hacked it, then someone is working on it. Apparently, someone has figured out a way to spoof some of the keyless entry systems in use today. It also appears that this black box doesn’t work on everything. In the security camera videos that I have seen the thief goes to where several cars are parked together, uses the machine and then goes to any vehicle that it successfully unlocks.
I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to predict that a legitimate version of this tool may be available to locksmiths at some time in the future. Of course as soon as the manufacturers find out how it works, they will take steps to block it on future vehicles, just as they have with mechanical tools. But wouldn’t it be nice to have a tool that would automatically unlock lots of cars made in the past decade or two?
Power window remote activators are a totally different matter. I have seen video of a gang attacking a BMW with one of these tools. They insert a probe into the door like a car-opening tool and then the window rolls down. I’m assuming that the tool has a battery and that the thief knows where to attack the power window motor. That type of tool would not be very useful to a locksmith since it would have to be different for virtually every different model car.
I suspect that we will also see enhancements of existing long-reach tools to make them more versatile. We already have lighted tools and tools with “grabbers.” One tool that I have used a lot recently is the “Silver Snatcher” from Best Tools, which uses a steel cable that can be steered and tightened as needed to pull vertical lock buttons and grab keys inside the car. I recently used it to pull the keys out of the inside of a Honda Fit that was not cooperating. I also know that the designer of that tool has a new way to spread the doors coming soon.
However, the future is always a surprise, and I look forward to future vehicle entry tools with anticipation. I’m also a little leery about all of this emphasis on electronics and whiz-bang gadgetry. The more complicated things get, the more they can fail. I suspect there may be a customer backlash somewhere along the line to $300 keys or fobs that can only be made by the dealer. I personally have been nailed with an $850 water pump, and pair of power door lock actuators that would have cost me $800 if I didn’t have an extended warranty. This trend toward technology just for technology’s sake has got to end eventually.
