Inside a combination padlock

[weerwolf]

This is a Abus 155/20 I've taken appart a while ago.
I had sold it to a customer. She had tried to change the combination , but must have done something wrong. She came back to the store and bought a new one. I set the new combo myself this time.
Instead of throwing the lock away , I decided to take it appart , and see whats inside.

This is the lock itself


There are 2 rivets on one side , I drilled them out


Then just take off the cover.
You can now see the inside. Notice the spring under the shackle and the spring that holds the tumblers.


These are all the parts. I kept the tumblers and shackle together


These are all the parts that make up the tumblers and the shackle.
The wheels on the top of the picture have 1 gate for the shackle and have 4 pins on the outside. The pics are not equally spread. One of them facing the gate.
The wheel at the bottom goes around the top one. It has 10 gates , equally spread out.
I'm sorry for the crap picture. I couldn't get the camera to focus better.

[MacGnG1]

very cool. always wondered what those lil ones looked like inside

[lunchb0x]

Thats pretty cool, just shows how basic these lock are, you can also see how the combination would be changed by the shackle puching down on the inner wheel disingaging it from the outer.

Also does your camera have a macro setting? (picture of a flower) if it does use this setting to take closer pictures

[neo7333]

Could that lock be shimmied to open?

[weerwolf]

No , it can't be shimmed.
There is no spring operated latch that hooks in the shackle. The shackle is kept closed by the tumblers.

The only way to open it , is to dail the code right.

[cppdungeon]

hah, beat me to posting pix of one of these. The other way you can open them is by pulling on the shackle, and finding the "binding dial" when rotated into the correct position, one of the other dials will lock up, just like picking. so you just rotate them till you get the right combo. it shouldn't take more than a minute if your even a little bit good at it. also these locks are sometimes plastic. Not very secure IMO.

[weerwolf]

True

I've known the technique you mentioned since I was 14. I kind of figured it on my own , just playing around with the lock.

I usually only sell these for suitcases. There is a tougher version , the ABUS 150/30 , that I recommend for most situations.

[zecle 22]

yeah i tried that teqnique on a pd/lck i have but it had a interesting feature ( it would bind on all of the odd numbers and you would have to push the shackle down and move to the next number ended up taking me 15 min to do

[Raymond]

This is just a comment on a style of picking this kind if lock. When pulling out on the shackle, the little flags on the shackle hit against the combo wheels. Even when there are raised fences between each number to create the turning difficulty, false sets, it can be picked. When a combo wheel is turned to the "open" number, the flag hits nothing but the combo gap. Therefore that combo wheel probably will not move up at all. It will also probably feel loose. If you watch closely you can probably see the difference in movement. The other wheels will move, so continue turning each until it stops moving up.

Happy picking

[Banan_mormor]

I have decoded a lot of combination padlocks and never had any big problems.
But when a tried to get the Abus 165/40 open it didn´t go as good.
The problem is that i tried the usual ways , pull-the-schackel-technique and the modified-feeler-gage-technique. didn´t have a problem with other abus combination locks like the Abus 158.
Is there someone who knows a good technique to get the 165/40 open ?



Sorry for the bad spelling

[roxylass]

i also have had no joy with this lock.