That is a Joe Paterno quote, but I think it applies well in our situation. In spite of my education and background in engineering, none of us has actually done most of what we plan to do. Like changing out Donna’s locks and keys.
When Donna came to us, she had three keys. One for the doors, which while it was the correct key for the lock, the lock itself wouldn’t turn and lock or unlock the door from the outside. One for the ignition, which was missing the spacer so that the entire key mechanism turned instead of the key turning the internal switch and starting or stopping the engine. And one for the trunk, which given the other situations, miraculously turned and unlocked the trunk.
We decided to rectify all these problems at once with a completely new set of lock mechanisms and matching keys, one key for the doors and ignition and another for the trunk. We ordered the necessary parts for the project and waited in anticipation for them to arrive.
Once the parts were here, we started with the door locks since they didn’t actually work. The concept is simple, The lock cylinder is held in place in the door by a spring clip and kept from rotating by keyed notches in the door metal that correspond to protrusions on the lock mechanism body.
You simply disconnect the rod that actuates the door lock and then remove the spring clip to allow the old lock to come free. Installation is the reverse process. No problem. Except this is where you are working:
Actually, where you are working is farther up behind that stuff you can see. Very tight. Sharp edges. Can’t see. But with patience and effort we got both of them done.
The ignition switch was another thing entirely. The lock cylinder fits into a switch mechanism. There is a key on the lock cylinder that matches a keyway in the switch mechanism to keep the lock cylinder from rotating. We bought a new lock cylinder with the door lock so the keys would be the same. We also bought a new switch mechanism which came with a lock cylinder installed (we didn’t know that.) We needed to put the properly keyed lock cylinder into the new switch mechanism, but it didn’t fit. The key was too tall to fit in the keyway.
We finally managed to press the two parts together and went to install the new mechanism into the car. That’s when we found out that the wiring harness plug would not fit into the new mechanism. We tried to file down the oversized pins and get the parts to fit, but it wasn’t happening. So, we decided to go back to the old mechanism with the new lock cylinder, the one that we had to force into the new mechanism…hence the photo above of the mechanism in pieces. We had to disassemble the new mechanism in order the drive the lock cylinder out with a punch.
With the new lock cylinder installed in the old switch mechanism, we plugged it back into the wiring harness. Now we have some other problems that have to be resolved.
The condition of the wiring harness is poor. We intend to completely rewire the whole car when we strip her down for the body work and paint, so it won’t pay to spend time here now. A wire nut to cover the bare wires and we reinstalled the switch.
Then we moved on to the trunk, which turned out to be the easiest of all. The lock is easily accessible from inside the trunk space and the cylinder mounts the same as the door locks. So we pulled the clip changed out the lock and put the clip back. Done.
Old Lock
New Lock
Now we have working locks and ignition switch, with two keys as Donna would have had originally.