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This is my first Porsche (86 944) and I am not familiar with Porsche keys from the 80's. Do the ignition and door keys for my 944 look normal or severely worn? What I mean is this key looks like it has very little sophistication - only 3 bumps for tumblers. While a GM key of the same era would have 5 or 6 bumps on the profile.
I am in a similar dilema. My car has 191K miles on it, so I know the one key I have is likely to be very worn and mine looks overly simplistic like the one pictured. I need to get spare keys, but the last thing I want to do is have them cut to match an almost worn out one. One of two of my locks the key seems to barely work in, could be the key being worn, could be the lock being bad, I have no way of knowing. So like the OP I am wondering if that sort of really smooth/simple cut is what the keys look like new, or are they typically more pronounced/sharper ridges?
944 lock cylinders have 7 tumblers. IIRC there are 4 different tumbler sizes (maybe 5?). Your keys are worn. But also, the key in the bottom pic has like 3 "bumps" of the same height so that area looks straight.
Thanks for the comment FRporsheman, wow 7 tumblers is hard to imagine looking at my ignition key. I'm glad you understood the purpose of my question. Very helpful.
If anyone needs a new key, i bought a new key blank from all-zims and took it to my local locksmith. The lady there was excellent. she refused to make the copy from my old key, it would just have been a new copy of a worn key. She looked up my car on her database and found they matched vw keys from 1975-1995 (sounds about right doesn't it?). she then compared my worn key to the ones that came up and chose the most likely profile. She then cut her own cheap key first. I tried it my car and it worked perfectly in the doors, hatch and ignition. Then she used that one as the template to cut my all-zims key blank. This took less than 20 mins. I encourage you to go try your locksmith!
Those are all replacement keys probably cut at a home store (Lowes/HD) or corner locksmith. Home store keys are soft brass which wear quickly. Original Porsche keys are steel and do not wear in the same fashion. Replacement Porsche blanks are also steel and are very hard to cut. Many locksmiths refuse to cut them since they cause undue wear on their machines.
+1
I was about to say the same thing. If you do buy a steel key, make sure the locksmith will cut steel before you drive all the way over there. And never make copies of worn out keys, find your key code (do a search on how). If you can take a lock cylinder out, you can take that to the locksmith.
I haven’t looked in a while but iirc the lock cylinder and pins are made of brass. Wouldn’t a steel key wear the lock cylinders out instead of wearing the keys out? Isn’t that a bad thing having to replace the locks instead of cutting new brass keys?
Steel key & brass tumblers= no problem in my book. If you can take the lock out of the glove box door, and use that one as a pattern to use when you go to the locksmith. That's probably the least worn lock in the entire car & the easiest to remove..just sayin..
07-18-2018, 12:31 PM
Is My Key Badly Worn or Just "Simple"?
