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This type of Nissan remotes can be expensive from a dealer. The remote below shows the original Nissan Navara remote that had been chewed by a dog, alongside a new one just programmed in. The Murano, Juke and other vehicles use similar looking remotes.

One of the benefits of these smart/proximity remotes is that on most vehicles you do not have to put the key in the slot to start the vehicle. You can keep the key in your pocket and just press the start button (ok, maybe sometime press the clutch or brake too). You shouldn’t need to press lock/unlock on the remote to open/lock the car either – you can just press the little button on the door handle. (It’s surprising how often owners don’t realise this).

As with all proximity keys do consider where you store you keys in the house. If the car can still detect the keys inside the house, a thief can start your car and drive off without actually having the keys in his/her hand. Keep your keys at the opposite end of the house, or make or buy a box/pouch to shield them.

There are several reasons why your UPVC window won’t open. If the handle is turning but nothing happens it is likely that the mechanism inside the window is broken. If the window is jammed up we have several techniques to get it open and repair/replacement of broken parts.

It is common to be called to repair a window to find oil/WD40 squirted everywhere, the customer having tried to cure the problem. No amount of WD40 is going to make something like the examples we’ve removed below work again.

Typically window espags and gearboxes are made of brittle die cast metal. They can and do break with little provocation. They can normally be replaced fairly cheaply (compared to replacing the entire window).

A problem we see regularly is worn patio door rollers. In fact it’s a problem with any sliding door rollers such as van side doors or your rowing machine seat rollers.

The main cause for this is failure to keep the track clean and dry. One of the worst things you can do is to lubricate the track, either with oil, grease, WD40 or goose fat. Keep the track dry so the rollers grip the surface and rotate correctly around the axle/bearing. If you lubricate the track the rollers will slide rather than rotate. Eventually they’ll flatspot, plus you’ll get grit sticking to the oil. You can even wear the track out which can be very problematic to replace.

Think of your car wheels. They are designed to grip the road and rotate around the axle. You don’t want your tyres locked up just sliding on the ice.

Modern motorbikes mostly have factory fitted immobilisers. It was mandatory for new cars to be fitted with immobilisers long before their common adoption with motorcycles. For decades all it took to steal a motorcycle was to kick the steering lock off and screwdriver the ignition to on. Now a modern engine won’t run without a correctly programmed transponder detected, regardless of whether the ignition is turned on, or not.

It is still recommended to use secondary security devices such as chains or disc locks. These will make it more awkward for criminals to wheel the van away or lift it into a van to be broken into parts. It isn’t about making your bike impregnable – it’s about making it easier to steal somebody else’s instead.

It is much simpler to make a duplicate programmed transponder key for your motorcycle if you still have a working key. Once you’ve lost all keys it’s significantly more expensive and may require getting trailered to a main dealer. Many motorbike transponder chips can be cloned which avoids having to program the ECU or having to connect devices to the harness.

We can provide spare keys for many bikes fitted with immobilisers such as Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha, BMW etc.

Mortice locks can become difficult to open for various reasons. Examples are a worn key, misaligned door, worn lock, or a foreign object.

This British Standard 5 lever lock has just been removed from a steel welfare toilet unit. Customer could not unlock the door. The original keys were in good condition. The door could not be picked and it didn’t feel right when trying. This tells a locksmith that the lock is faulty.

The only option to open the door was to make a small and accurately placed hole through both the door and the armour plate of the lock. Once the lock was disabled the door could be opened.

You can see the gap between the side plate and the body of the lock. A lever spring is stuck in the gap. This allows the lever to slip off the key and not spring back. This is quite often seen with this make and model of lock. If I fit them I will Loctite the screws in place to prevent it happening.

UPVC doors commonly fail / break due to door misalignment, old age or misuse.

One of the rarer problems I’ve come across is due to the door being full of water. In one example a customer reported their door was jammed shut if it was really cold. On first attendance it was below freezing and the door felt heavy. Later in the afternoon once it was warmer you could hear water sloshing about in the door. We drained nearly 10 litres from that door before correcting the other fault.

In another UPVC door below that had jammed shut due to corrosion of the multipoint mechanism you can see the final dregs of about 5 litres of water being drained out of the door.

If your UPVC window won’t open there may be a few causes. The simplest of them to to fix will be a faulty window handle. At the other end of the spectrum is a window jammed shut because the mechanism has broken.

With the correct tools a jammed window can be opened and the mechanism replaced. We carry stock for most types of window mechanism.

Even a layman can see why the mechanism in the picture below wasn’t working. This make and model of espag (espagnolette) gearbox is one of the more common ones we come across.

Do you have a door that is difficult to lock from one side? Mortice locks are normally designed to operate from both sides. If key is mostly used from one particular side of the door the key can wear unevenly.

An indicator of a worn key is it working better from one side, and/or having to jiggle the key up and down to get it to turn. Getting a new key cut from an original (not a copy) may solve your problem.

In the example above key has worn but this made worse by being a badly copied key from a high street shop. Points A and B should be flat across the top but you can see the uneven wear. Because point A is too narrow it has been able to slip off lever 5 in the lock. Unfortunately the worn keys had cause wear to the levers so it was necessary to replace the levers too.