Hi Stan, many thanks for that & a good write up by you on the link, especially about using a towel to catch bits
. Just a few question's if I may:-
1) the pin that holds the barrel in, is it just an interference fit, roughly what is the outside diameter of it & can you drill through the length of it or will it damage something ?
2) when you say "use a piece of wire to hold the wafers in" do you insert the wire in the keyhole & out the other end ?
I will still buy one of the switches that
@sierrafery suggested & see if I can adjust the wafers with a file to fit my existing key as they're cheap enough compared to £530 for a genuine one
. All the best.
Thanks for this.
1/ I am having to go by memory, it IS just an interference fit I can't tell you the outside diameter of it as I don't have it to hand without taking it apart again. Just reread most of my own thread.
and it would appear 3.5 mm is the diameter of the hole. But I'd start smaller than that and then go up in size if necessary. But you don't need to drill deep, imagine you are drilling out a pop rivet, it is similar to that. In fact I managed to preserve enough of mine to be able to reuse it, plus a carefully positioned cable tie, to keep it in again after I did the job. Don't try to drill right through, you may well damage something. And you'd have to keep the pin in from both sides!
2/ The point about keeping the wafers in is that only the casing keeps them in and they have tiny little springs that could well push them out and then get lost. In fact I think it might be easier to wrap masking tape or something around it until you are ready to get the key back in to hold them all in place. As my thread said, about the piece of wire, "from either end" then it must be possible or I wouldn't have said it! But I can't remember, I am having to trust my own words here.
If you want to take the wafers out, and you may well need to as they can get sticky and need a light filing to make them move more easily, it is totally possible. But gravity will pull the lower ones out while you are removing the others upwards!
Hence the need for tape! Or, as I said in the thread, a bit of wire. I can't remember whether it would have been possible to push the wire all the way through.
If the worst comes to the worst and all the wafers and springs end up on the towel, you will still be able to sort it out. Each wafer will correspond to a cut out on the key. The "key" thing being that once the key is in the barrel, all wafers must be flush with the surface of the inner barrel so it can turn in its outer. If a wafer is still sticking up, there'll prolly be another that is too low down.
At the end of the day, you can just file the whole lot flush so the barrel turns in its housing.
After having done this once and not wanting to ever have too many keys on the one ring, I would always fix it this way.
I have a Disco 1 that a previous owner changed the ignition barrel on.
But the stupid fecker never kept the original key. He relied on using the remote to get into the car.
So as I didn't use it much, one day the battery died. I had three keys but not one would let me into the car. So I had to burgle it old skool to get in! It still amazes me, as a key is necessary to get the fuel filler flap open. The key does JUST open it.
So one fine day I am going to have to take the barrel out of at least the driver's door and file the wafers to fit the ignition key.
There is also the issue of what happens if your remote is used to lock the doors then you walk away from it and the alarm goes off!
This happened to me a few times on my D2 so I ended up having to lock it with the key to neutralise the movement sensor in it.
So you still need a viable door key. Much easier if it is the same key.
Best of luck and don't hesitate to ask if nec!!
