Please help identify and close safe!

[Papa's Safe]

newbie with no experience here.
please, moderators, if i have posted this in the wrong place, please move.

please help me with this safe. the only marking i can see is an underwriter's label.
also, the safe cannot be closed due to one of the latches being "out."
it worked fine last week before my child played with it.
when the combination is entered,
"Left 4 times and stop at 80
Right 3 times and stop at 10
Left 2 times and stop at 60
Then turn right as far as it will go.
rotate door anti-clockwise to open."
i can feel the mechanism "disengage" like normal, but the "latch" does not retract.

is anyone familiar with this?

[Squelchtone]

Actually we dont talk about safes in the open forum, but for this one I'm almost willing to make an exception. (the reason we dont is that if we for instance teach someone everything there is to know about your safe in order to fix it or dial it or drill it or crack it, someone down the road may find this thread and use it for something bad or criminal) BUT since your safe is open and you are basically asking for dialing instructions and basic troubleshooting, unless another mod wants to close this, let's keep it open today and see what we can figure out.

I dont know that mechanism first hand, but I do have a book on it at home which I can take a look at in about 3 hours. Have you tried taking off the 2 slotted screws and removing the cover to see if some linkage has become disconnected from the safe lock bolt to the mechanism that makes the bolts retract or come out?

Start with that and if you get it fixed let us know, other than that lets wait for some senior safe guys to come along and weigh in their thoughts on this.

Squelchtone

[Papa's Safe]

Squelchtone,
thank you for your quick and kind reply.
and thank you for not deleting the thread.

fearful of quickly getting in over my head, i have not attempted to disassemble.
besides trying the combination a few dozen times, i have tried tapping on the latch with a mallet . . . but that is the extent of of my work on it.
i'll take the cover off. would it be helpful if i posted a pic of that when i get the cover off?

[Papa's Safe]

okay, took the cover off and there was what (i assume) is a familiar sight to some of you.
the cover of the lock is stamped Diebold and has the numeral 900 under it:



i took that cover off and revealed this:



what should i look at now?

[dls]

Looks like a mosler i worked on about 15 years ago

[Papa's Safe]

dls,
thank you for your reply.
i just looked at some pics and videos of mosler safes and found a couple of references to them using the Diebold 900.

i have another question. what type of a safe is this? what would it have been used for?

[Squelchtone]

dls,
thank you for your reply.
i just looked at some pics and videos of mosler safes and found a couple of references to them using the Diebold 900.

i have another question. what type of a safe is this? what would it have been used for?

its usually surrounded/encased in concrete and used to store cash at a pizza shop, 7/11, liquor store. At least that's how I've seen them installed.

[Squelchtone]

okay, took the cover off and there was what (i assume) is a familiar sight to some of you.
the cover of the lock is stamped Diebold and has the numeral 900 under it:



i took that cover off and revealed this:



what should i look at now?

Verify you are indeed for sure 100% dialing the correct combo and that after you dial it you are turning the dial in the correct direction in order to drop the fence into the cut outs in the 3 wheels, which then allows the nose to drop into the cam wheel and then you keep turning the dial to retract the bolt into the lock.

Check that the fence spring is still springy.

You may want to hold the door up vertically if it does not totally remove from the safe, and put a mirror on the other side and then dial the combo and watch in the mirror to see whats happening to the wheel pack and if all the cutouts are lining up under the fence. (the fence is the rectangular rod that drops into the cutouts, it is attached to the lever and nose which drops into the curved cutout on the wheel you can see when you took the cover off.)

Try some grease on the bolt, or make sure nothing is bent out of shape from slamming the door against the safe body in trying to shut it.. the bolt may be bent and if it is it wont retract into the lock body.

This PDF has photos of all the parts and what they are called: http://www.crypto.com/papers/safelocks.pdf

Here's a guy on youtube taking a Mosler 900 apart on a door similar to yours: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4VwP93wjk8

Here's how a typical safe lock works so you can see how the parts work with each other http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isMMjuR0uuw

Good luck,
Squelchtone

[Al]

Seriously. Do not even try to shut the safe before getting a professional to service it.
A call out will be far far cheaper than an opening charge. The safe tech would then have to sort it if it did lock you out soon after.

You could even unbolt the door and take it into a lockshop if you wish to save money.

[dls]

Al is right if you dont know what you are doing then get someone who does.
I have to go and open a fichet tomorow where the key was stiff and working intermitently for two weeks, the guy had been squirting wd40 into the keyhole to keep it going, now his whole office has to be pulled apart so the safe can be drilled the whole lock and attached boltwork has fallen apart resulting in two triggered relockers.

[shadow11612]

Looking at the picture of the lock, with the back cover removed, the wheel pack is not aligned. If you had dialed the combination and then not touched or spun the dial anymore, the wheel pack should be lined up. If this is the case, either you have the wrong combination or you have a stuck flywheel, which requires someone with experience to take the lock apart and fix.

As squelchtone stated, using a mirror or partner, holding the door open and with the lock's back cover off, dial the combination and see if the wheels are lining up.

With this lock, the outermost wheelpack (the one that is lined up under the fence in your picture) is the first number.

Also, I cannot tell from your picture of the lock's internal parts if this lock has 3 or 4 wheelpacks. The 900 model could have either. If the lock has a 4th wheelpack, you are missing a number from your combination.

[Papa's Safe]

Thank you all for your advice!

After taking the cover off, and watching the lock operate while inputing the combination, I determined that the instructions I had were incorrect.

instead of:

"Left 4 times and stop at 80
Right 3 times and stop at 10
Left 2 times and stop at 60
Then turn right as far as it will go.
rotate door anti-clockwise to open."

the correct solution was:

"Left 4 times and stop at 80
Right 2 times and stop at 10
Left 1 times and stop at 60
Then turn right as far as it will go.
rotate door anti-clockwise to open."

while i had it apart i cleaned and re-greased the mechanisms. it needed it, there were a lot of steel shavings in it.

it's now operating better than before.

thank you again for all the help!

[Squelchtone]

Thank you for the update and it's exciting that you got it figured out and fixed up! =)

The 4 to the left thing is so that you can clear the combination and pick up all the wheels, then you stop on the first number of the combination, after that you already figured out the rest. I think some more seasoned safe guys here can better rewrite the instructions, I'm still learning.

Come back and talk about locks any time!
Squelchtone

[Al]

Don't count actual revolutions of the dial, count every time the number you are heading for lines up with the opening index.
Turning from 10 to 60 once will not even pick up the wheel to move it.

[cledry]

We would write the instructions as:

4 times left to the 80
3 times right to the 10
2 times left to the 60
1 time right until the dial stops.

The directions below are incorrect for the safe illustrated. How are you counting?

"Left 4 times and stop at 80
Right 2 times and stop at 10
Left 1 times and stop at 60
Then turn right as far as it will go.
rotate door anti-clockwise to open."