Advice on opening a Stanley 40mm combination padlock

[Hippo_vibrations]

Hello all!

A friend of mine was throwing away a lock he had to cut open, so I asked it for toying around with. It's a 4-digit combination padlock with a really solid feel to its build. I've been trying to get it to open but so far I've had little success.



Applying pressure to the mechanism by pulling on the surviving part of the shackle does allow me to get some feedback on the disks, but I'm having trouble in understanding what's happening inside. It feels like that the dials are binding in some way at different positions, but I haven't seen the insides of these types of locks before, so I'm struggling. I tried to google for some cut-out pictures of the mechanism but failed -- does anyone here have a good feel on what is going on with the lock and how to 'read' it?

[stratmando]

Looks like where shackle goes into lock may be uncrewed, could be reverse threads? Try a small pin in each of little holes, then turn wheels one at a time to see if it dropped to the next wheel? Try clamping Channel Locks on shackle. Also try Decoding wheels. Good Luck

[Hippo_vibrations]

Looks like where shackle goes into lock may be uncrewed, could be reverse threads? Try a small pin in each of little holes, then turn wheels one at a time to see if it dropped to the next wheel? Try clamping Channel Locks on shackle. Also try Decoding wheels. Good Luck

Thanks! I'll report on my success in a few days if I can!

[Hippo_vibrations]

So, so far no luck, it almost seems like that there are some very deep false gates on the wheels, since at times it feels like the locking bar almost jams with none of the bars moving anymore. I'll need to set up some sort of jig where I can measure the movements of the pieces more accurately and do a more precise analysis, at this time I'm still quite lost about what might be going on within the lock

[stratmando]

If remaining piece of shackle rotates, may be at a position that won't allow to open. I would apply more force and go back and forth through the wheels looking for the free spots, good luck

[MartinHewitt]

I have a look-alike. That has four false and one true gate evenly distributed around. First you have to put all wheels into one of these gates.

[Gantry]

This may help you out. These video's aren't the exact lock you have but close and they work the same way...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYFUI6-81B8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmwLfQdwHQY

[MartinHewitt]

I do have a lookalike lock. It opens fastest by (testing always with a pull on the shackle):

1) first putting all wheels into some of the gates
2) then always start testing for a binding wheel starting from the shackle side
3) turn the first binding (some scratching is enough) wheels by two numbers
4) continue with step 2 until open

In my lock the fourth wheel has a very pronounced true gate.

With this strategy I can get mine open and changed in one minute.

[stratmando]

See if you can notice the difference in movement of the Gates/False gates, sometimes true and false have a slight difference of movement. Hope you have not given up. Are you using vice grips on shackle, and sure it is rotated to the correct spot.