pick a car lock

I’ve locked my truck keys in my vehicle again for the ump-teenth time. I have a set of automotive lockpicks yet I don’t know how to use them. All I need to do is get the door open. Any suggestions?

For years, I have helped friends out with coat hangers and impromtu slim jims for persnickity modern cars (you would be amazed what you can do with a piece of steel banding from a back alley)

But I had never jimmied an ignition lock before. Some friends of mine and I were at a junk yard looking for some parts for a project and when we were finished, discovered that my car keys had been lost somewhere in 100 acres of junkyard. We looked for several hours and finally the junkyard was closing and wanted to boot us out. I asked if they had any Honda keys that I could try in my ignition. He handed me a box of thousands of keys to every car in the lot!!

It was pretty easy to sort through and identify all the double-sided keys that would physically fit into the ignition. None of them worked. I decided to take a second pass and to jiggle the keys while turning them. BINGO!! on about the 5th retry, one worked.

That really saved my ass because a locksmith would have been a couple hundred bucks, but mostly it has me reconsiderng just how we take for granted the security of locks.

Locked the keys in the car a few years ago. Clothes hanger time!