Inside the American 5200 series padlock

[vrocco]

Well here it is.





After many recommendations, I found the way to go is:

1. A small tension tool in the top of the keyway. I used one of Peterson's blanks that was about the width of a bobby pin.

2. Hold the lock upside down so the pins are on the bottom instead of the top. They seem to set easier that way.

I am kind of proud of myself for getting this. By far the hardest thing I have picked yet. I can do it regularly. I have 5 of these, so I alternate between them to avoid memorizing the order of the pins.

Thans for all the help and suggestions![/img]

[JackNco]

if they are giving you trouble then your doing better than be I still find these to be a pain at times. but you may as well harvest pins from a couple and pun your self a nice evil lock, in high low pinning.

John

[vrocco]

Hey now that's a good idea. I am going go put together a harder one.

[raimundo]

If you are seeing them a lot, write down all the code letters on them and see if it is a limited set of keys. just make a list and after its a long one, look it over for repeats in the code. The military has a thing about using keyed alike locks, there may be some that are common for some uses, just like here there are keyed alike locks on all the dumpsters. and you can just ask a locksmith to sell you one for your dumpster and he will give you that same one.
likely there are some uses that do not require really high security and they would just use different sets of KA locks,
Has anyone tried using a bump key on them, with very light tension?

[dmux]

i have made that homemade bumpkey and its on youtube and gvideo, but its a pretty crude key

[Raymond]

The letter codes stamped on the lock bodies are only a date production code relevant to the factory. This is evident if you examine several padlocks from the same box purchase - they will be the same. Only the key code stamped on the original keys are valid as a code and they are not published.

[le.nutzman]

The American 5200s are nice locks, like dmux, being in the military, i've had my fair share of these. While I was in Iraq, I ended up shipping home a complete footlocker of nothing but locks that I ended up finding and picking open. Among them, 85% of them were Americans.

I've gotten to the point where I can open an American 5200 in about 2 minutes with a standard tension wrench and short hook pick. My thing, I chopped the tension wrench tip down almost to 1/4 of the length so i can stick it at an angle in the very bottom of the keyway and literally just rest my finger on it and use my hook pick to gently lift each pin stack.

With these locks, i can honestly say that tension is everything. But they are also very forgiving if you use too much in that if you are using too much, you're still going to hear something either false set or set.

I can tell you that in a quick pinch, if i can't open the lock, or if it's truely that dirty, saturating the lock in WD-40 for 30 seconds and then picking it also works well as the WD40 fills in the gaps in the serrated and the spoorated pins and allows for an easier glideover for a pin set. But don't take my word for it. Try it yourself and see.............Oh, and before I forget, others will in fact tell you that this is a bad idea as it will eventually gum up the lock in the long run. While this is also true, when your in the field, time is of the essence so i do absolutely what's necessary to get the lock open as quickly as i can. And personally, i haven't had the gumup aftereffect occur as of yet.