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Vent: I sprayed WD-40 into my trunk lock and now the whole latch is gummed up
Went to lube a sticky trunk lock on my 71 Nova last Saturday and grabbed the blue can instead of the graphite puff I normally use. Two days later the key would not even go in, and I had to pull the whole latch out and clean it with brake cleaner. What is your go to for locks that actually stays slick without turning into glue?
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joseph_sanchez19d ago
WD-40 is mostly solvent with a little oil in it, so it works great for a week and then the solvent evaporates and leaves behind a sticky film that grabs every bit of dust in the air. I read a post on a lock picking forum a while back from a guy who's been a locksmith for 30 years, and he said the same thing. He refuses to touch the blue can on anything with moving pins. What he uses instead is plain old dry graphite or a Teflon based dry lube like Tri-Flow. The key word there is dry. You want something that goes on wet enough to get in there and then dries and leaves a slick coat behind, not oil that stays tacky. On a 71 Nova trunk latch you could also just hit it with a tiny bit of white lithium grease on the moving parts, but keep that stuff out of the actual key cylinder or you'll be right back where you started.
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