DealersEdge Professional Forums

Two part question.. how are you cutting the new keys coming in these kits?? Trace or cut with machine by Keycode???? Those of you doing it by keycode have any of your techs complained about the keys not dropping the tumblers and turning the cylinder? TIA

We do it by key code here and haven't had any issues, we code the locks and have them ready to go. Only had 1 issue where key code did not match the car and after doing research on it we believe it was a typo by someone.

Well the techs code the cylinder and all of them have had issues... the key will work the door perfectly and if we trace off of the old key they work fine as well... Now I cant believe its our machine because we still are cutting plenty of keys by code on our PC+ for customers who have locked themselves out or lost their keys and have had not one come back saying the keys didn't work... We have even gone as far as measuring the new keys back by the head vs the customers original keys and the ones in the kits are wider.

We've done about 20 so far and the only one that didn't work was the one my counter guy gave the wrong kit too - oops. And then I was too stupid to check that before I ruined one of the keys trying to recut it.

I've done every one of them by code - even the 2nd key (instead of tracing the first key I just cut)

We had had one Saturn that was the early version of the keys that wouldn't work in the doors until the tech ground it down a bit and got a call yesterday from a customer who has one key that doesn't work - it turns but won't start the car so that just sounds like a programming issue.

Other than that, it's been going pretty flawless

Well thankfully another local dealer is going to help me out as their parts dept codes the cylinders and he hasn't had one problem... I'm going to cut the first key let our tech code the cylinder if there is an issue I will send our cut key, the uncut key and the cylinder over to him and he will cut the second key... if the key still doesn't work we will know its a cylinder coding issue if it works we will know its the machine.. Thanks for the imput as always!

We have always had a better success rate cutting by code, even before this recall. So, we only cut the keys by code and haven't had any issues...knock on wood.

Are you converting code to depths for whomever is coding the cylinders? A lot of people are not as good at reading keys as they think they are. We have only had 2 that caused a problem. One was a salvabge pieced together POS and the other the key worked everything but the trunk so we replaced the trunk cylinder.

cville1987 wrote:Are you converting code to depths for whomever is coding the cylinders? A lot of people are not as good at reading keys as they think they are. We have only had 2 that caused a problem. One was a salvabge pieced together POS and the other the key worked everything but the trunk so we replaced the trunk cylinder.

good point and another question to go with that - are they coding them in the right direction of the cuts? I did have one tech that couldn't remember which way they read but a tleast he asked before doing it

Bailo1 wrote:We have always had a better success rate cutting by code, even before this recall. So, we only cut the keys by code and haven't had any issues...knock on wood.

same here but I've noticed it comes down to not pushing hard enough while tracing

We've done them two different ways, either typing the code in directly or cutting by code to depths.... we then give the depths to the tech in the order the display shows... I would "think" by now they would know which direction to put the tumblers in... time will tell today after I do our little experiment