jbob

as my car is right now it takes 2 keys to make it work. one set fits the doors and one set fits the ignition.

i can live with it as is, but what would be the types of costs associated with solving this - outside of taking it to a shop or dealer of course hehe. next to no one here does things like that ;-)

Van

It's free if you take apart the door lock mechanisms and through trial and error figure out which tumblers to use to work with your ignition key. It only takes a few hours - good to do on a rainy day.

jbob

no way, you are saying i can just rekey it that way?

would i be tweaking the ignition keyslot? trick is if i screw that up, the car won't drive...

mrgreenjeans

Have you driven over to your local locksmith and asked him this question ? No Porsche dealership close by to order new locksets ? Or at least price them out ?

There are getting to be more and more of our cars on the market with this issue due to switch over on either the ignition or one of the door locks. Sometimes both.

Sounds like possibly the ignition was switched out first on yours ?

If you have the original books to the car, there may be a record of the key code and possibly ordering out the locks from the dealership to match the code for the switch and replacing them.

Does the ignition key match the rear trunk or the gas lock ?

I have several cars in my small collection where one key matches all the locks, and some where there is a different key for each set of locks. One car has 3 keys all different, some with a small head.

I learned to live with it.

Just like the owners of 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s cars did back in the day. 2 unlike keys for doors and trunk which didn't match the ignition.

mrgreenjeans

Van

you are a much more intense fellow than I.

The white coated guys would be hauling my butt off in a van on a stretcher with my arms locked in strait-jacket mode......

Van

I'd do the door locks. Take the door handles off, then, with the key that currently works in the lock cylinders, you can undo the screw at the back of the cylinder and the cylinder will slide out of the handle.

You'll see how there are little tumbler things that move up and down when the key is put in. The tumblers are cut differently to match up with the height of the spots on the key. You can take them out of the cylinder (each one has a little spring), and then mix them up (and you might have to omit a few) to get them to work off of the pattern from the ignition key.

Put it all back together (you might also want to clean them up, if they have old dry grease on the springs) and now you can use the same key for the ignition and the doors!

Van

Here's a picture that shows the tumblers out of the cylinder:

jbob

thanks for the ideas - excited to have a play around and learn something new

first thing to learn - how to get at the handles? on my 924S am i taking off a couple screws that hold the interior to the door?

while i am at i want to try something to smooth out the door action. it takes almost two hands to open the doors. tried squirting some generic bike lube in there a while back to little effect. should i just use basic grease?

Van

Just a screw on the edge of the door. And then you have to pop off the little plastic coupler for the rod that locks and unlocks the mechanism.

Because your door is hard to open, it's likely that the trigger piece is actually cracked and deflecting when you squeeze it. If that's the case, you'll have to buy a new handle, and those are pretty pricey.

Tiger03447

Some of the parts can be found at Pelican? or Only 944? But the little bellcrank parts if they are broken can be had fairly cheaply.

dmjames

Not necessarily the case! In my case, I found that all it took to make the door easier to open was to clean and re-grease the door handle mechanism, spray some lubricant on the latch mechanism from inside the door panel, and tighten up/adjust the linkages when putting them back in.

Swapping the wafers from one cylinder to another is trivial- I'd talk to a local locksmith and find out what they'd charge to re-key things if you do the removal yourself. The biggest pain in the *** about the whole process is honestly getting the cylinder out of the ignition (you have to drill through part of the housing to get to the release!), so it might be easiest to just have both doors re-keyed to match the ignition.

Van

Agreed - the door cylinders come out easily, so you're better off changing those to match the existing ignition key.