Now I may have given the end of the story away in the title but you cannot imagine how much my heart sunk when this happened.

You may if you have read my blog remember that I fitted deadlocks to all my van doors.  Well today I popped out for a bit and when I came back to the van I couldn’t get in.

The key wouldn’t turn in the deadlock…   I thought the door might have shifted and jammed the bar.  But no amount of shoulder barging the door would let me in.  After much messing about I got the tin of WD40 out and sprayed copious amounts inside the lock.  It still wouldn’t turn.   I then sprayed the key and tried again still no joy.   I then pushed the spout between the gap in the door and aimed it at the top of the locking bar.  Then using my shoulder to barge the door I tried wiggling.  Oooh,  a little bit of movement?  Might have been.  I kept this up for 2-3 minutes and it seemed to get a little bit more noticeable.  I sprayed in the lock again and through the gap.  Shoulder barged, sprayed, wiggled begged and pleaded and finally it moved about 3mm.   This small amount of progress gave me hope.  I sprayed some more and moved the lock all the way to the locked position again and back and forward.  Spray, wiggle, shoulder barge beg and plead and finally it jumped just enough to open the door.   It wasn’t full retracted but enough for me to get into the van, thaw out and have a much needed coffee.

Now I can get access to the locking bar with the door open, I decided on a tried and tested method of fixing things that won’t move that should.  I got my persuader out…  For those of you that don’t have any mechanical experience you may know the persuader as a hammer.  So another 5 minutes of gentle persuading, wiggling of keys and spraying of WD40 and the lock was totally free and back to how it was when I bought it.

I have now added “Spray Locks” onto my regular maintenance routine and they will get a spray once every 3 months from now on.