Pins of mush

[sisk]

I've got one American 1100 - 1 out of the 7 that I own, so I know it's just this lock - that is continuing to give me trouble. Everything in it feels like mush. There's no solid feedback from anything. it feels sort of like a cheap lock when you're not using enough tension, but it's an American and I get the same thing even with fairly heavy tension. Any heavier and I lock up the serrated pins. I can rake up a false set on it pretty easily, but it's got a gate keeper that drops when I set the first spool and at that point I'm back to everything feeling like mush. The lock does work, but I just can't manage to get it picked. Ant idea what the problem could be?

[mseifert]

The A1100 has pretty heavy spring to turn the core which could be mistaken for no action .. Also, Peterson Pry bar works best on these..

they are also full of Spools and Serrated Key and Driver pins ..

[sisk]

Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the model. As I said, I own 7 of them. Five I can consistently open in about a minute, one has a more difficult bitting but I can still usually get it within about 5 minutes. Then there's this one with the mushy feeling pins that I can't get open at all. Aside from my Medeco it's the only thing living in my unpicked bucket right now, and it's by far the longest I've worked on any single lock without opening it.

[kwoswalt99-]

Do you have the key? Maybe it's broken.

[sisk]

I have the key and it works.

[Br0keN]

Well I would suggest using a peterson prybar like stated above and just go through all the pins and push them up ever so slightly over and over again and hopefully that will get you to a false set where your going to need to use more force also tension control helps alot.

[sisk]

That's what I was doing. Anyway a few weeks ago that lock suddenly decided to start cooperating with me. I don't know if there was some buildup in it that finally worked loose or what, but now it's no harder than any other American 1100. In fact it's even easier than some of my others since it decided to stop giving me such a hard time.