Broken Key Extraction in San Jose

A key breaks when thin, worn metal meets a lock that no longer turns freely. The blade shears off, half stays in your hand and the rest sits inside the cylinder. Nothing about that situation improves with time, and pushing the remaining piece deeper or trying to turn it makes extraction harder.

We handle the removal at the vehicle. The technician looks at how the fragment sits, how deep it went and whether it is jammed under load in a turned position. Thin extractor tools hook the cut edges of the blade and draw the piece straight out along the keyway. That approach protects the wafers, which are easy to knock out of line with a screwdriver or a pair of pliers.

After extraction we check the lock itself. A cylinder that ate one key will often eat the next one, so we look for worn wafers, debris, a sticky ignition or a bent blade that was already dragging. That inspection tells you whether a fresh key solves it or whether the lock is the real problem.

San Jose driveways, apartment garages and office lots are all workable sites for this. Older commuter cars, work trucks and late-model vehicles with transponder keys each need a slightly different follow-up, and we cut and program the replacement on site so you leave with a key that turns.