Hi all.........anyone have any ideas on how we can remove our door lock cylinders from our doors ? the "set srews" that hold them in place, where you access them through the small hole on the outer inside door edge, are badly rusted in place and the allen heads are all rounded out......we've tried soaking them down w/various rust busting products, but to no avail.
was thinking possibilly "heat" and or somehow "tacking" a longer bolt/srew to the allen head, problem is the hole in the door is so small, there's no room to really get anything in there......hoping that we can salvage and re-use the locks, as they are keyed alike with the rest of the truck.
They are the only thing left in the doors and once we can get them out we'll remove the doors and cab form the frame! Any advice would be appreciated!!
Thank's....Doug

 

I would consider center punching and then carefully drilling them out. I am a fan of PB Blaster for soaking. If they are that rusty, you would probably break off an easyout so carefully center drilling and then re tapping the original holes would be my choice. I agee that saving the 5 star locks is very desireable.

 

If I recall, Bill's suggested procedure is the same thing I had to do to remove and replace the screw.

Ken

 

HI Doug,

I had that problem on my passenger side door and it was a pain. I don't know if yours are this way but the screws holding in my locks were hardened - and DID NOT drill out well. I ended up having to cut out the access hole to make it easier to work. Then I had to grind two flat edges on the head of the screw and wrestle it out with vise grips.

Here's a problem you might want to be considerate of when doing this. That screw mounts on an elongated threaded housing. and if you break that, or melt it, your in trouble. I figured I'd just end up having to braze a patch plate on it, and put the weather strip over it. I may just make a removeadble plate to over that corner with a tab to fit under one edge and small pan head sheet metal screws under the weather strip

Question, why are you taking them out? Unless you need to remove them for body or paint, or to remove the door latch mechanisms for repair, I might be tempted to leave them in. But - I wasn't happy to settle for that either.

Here's a picture of what you will be dealing with. The nut on mine is to lock the screw and leave a little more to grab the next time it freezes up.



I wish I had better news!

Good luck!

 

I bought a set of high quality left hand drills to get mine out, on the off chance that the threads would release while I was drilling.
Didn't happen, but I drilled the body of the setscrew out enough to remove the lock, then ran a tap through.
Be really careful not to drill into the lock itself, which is unfortunately easy to do.
And not to be obstreperous, but all 51 cabs are Five Star. If you're speaking of the cabs with locks in the driver's door and all the other goodies, those are Five Star Extra cabs.

Jonas

 

Thank's for all the good advice........look's like we'll be breaking out the drill and giving it our best shot!.......would anybody know how far we can safely drill into the housing b-4 getting into the lock cylinder itself ? Also what size bit would work best.

Thank's again, Doug

 

I wouldn't worry too much about hitting the cylinder; they are pretty easy to replace. But you can use a drill stop set to the length of the tube -- you can slide the drill alongside the tube to see how long the tube is. The cylinder fits right up to the end of the tube.

PS, I had no luck getting mine out, so I left it to the "pro's", who promptly broke the tube completely off. I'm faced with using a hose clamp and a BB to hold the cylinder in now. At least it will be easier to remove!