As a
locksmith technician most of the work I do it seem to be automotive services such as lockouts, ignition cylinder repairs, ignition cylinders replacements, key origination and few others. Most services are obviously for vehicles, but every now and then I would get called to service a motorcycle which is very rare thus I don't have much practice servicing them. Most of the time it will happen where I would need to service a motorcycle it would be for originating a key.
A while back I remember getting a call from a customer who just got a new motorcycle few days before and while he was driving it for few days he did not pay attention to the gas tank which went empty and left him stranded not to far from a gas station. Once he got to the gas station he came to realize that the key he had for the ignition of the motorcycle did not open the gas tank of the motorcycle. After letting him finish his story, I took his info and immediately called a
Reno locksmith co-worker of mine for some info about the key needed.
According to my co-worker, the type of motorcycle the customer claimed to have was using a tubular lock to protect the gas tank. Luckily I did have a blank for these types of locks, so I knew I didn't have to make any stops on my way to the customer's location. I headed to the gas station where the customer was and the first thing I did was testing the blank key I had to make sure it was the correct one for the customer's motorcycle gas tank.
As soon as I inserted the key blank into the gas tank lock, it seemed I was able to operate it. Not only that, but I was actually able to open it as well. This was something I did not encountered with all my years as a
locksmith technician. At that point, the customer's friends came on their motorcycles to the gas station as well. I then decided to test it on few of their motorcycles as well that had a gas tank with a tubular lock and on all of them I was able to unlock the gas tank. I have to admit that was the fastest key origination job I ever had to do.
