LaGard 3330 Troubles - OPENED!

[subsonic1050]

Hey everybody, I am having a go at a LaGard 3330 I just mounted up (posted a separate thread about that actually), but I could really use some help with this. I understand that the LaGard has wheels that are slightly out of round, but I am not sure how to proceed. I mapped it out AWL, and came up with the following graph:



I found the high spot around 27.5-30, but am unsure how to proceed. I tried parking 2 wheels at 30 (1&2, 1&3, 2&3) and the other wheel at 72.5 (looked like the best low spot I had?) to see if the third wheel would jump out at me. Then I tried doing the opposite: parking 2 wheels at 72.5 and the odd one at 30. Nothing is jumping out at me to identify which wheel is high at the 27.5 to 30 mark (they all appear normal when done individually, there only seems to be a high spot when all 3 are parked at 30). This doesn't really make sense to me. ANY SUGGESTIONS!??! I sure could use the help!

[jharveee]

Give it some time, I'm sure some of the other more experienced guys will chime in.

[femurat]

Oh man, you should look for the low spot, not the high one.
Looks like you have something interesting at 12.5, 72.5 and 90. You may amplify those areas to find the possible gate center.
After that check which wheel has the gate at those positions.

Good luck

[subsonic1050]

Thanks femurat! Yes I know I need to find the low spot, but the only thing that was pronounced was the high spot. The spots you spotted were only about 1/8 of an increment low, within my margin of error I thought, but I am getting better at finding the points consistently so I will check those spots again. Thanks!

[subsonic1050]

Well, I got it open! I may have gotten some unwitting help from my wonderful combination changing wife however. So, when I bought the lock, there was no combination set - so I set one just so that it would be a functioning lock (all gates were lined up when I got it, so just trying at 2.5 increments around the dial would have opened it!). I decided that since I was really going to delve into this lock, I better have the combination changed to something unknown.

So I proceeded with mapping out the lock again AWL, and got this (I didn't graph all the points after 10, until I got to something interesting):



This showed what looked like an obvious gate at 39 - obvious enough I didn't continue graphing. High-Low showed it to be the third number (more on that later). So I then did a second graph with 1&2AR and 3 parked at 39 which yielded this (only graphed the LCP - the right was considerably harder to pinpoint, and I decided the LCP may be enough):



This did reveal a high spot, but it was much too wide to be a gate. So I decided that since wheel 2 is often the first or second wheel to indicate, that I would park wheel 1 at 50 (the middle of the lowest area), and map wheel 2, which yielded this:



When I got to 37.5 I found a SERIOUS low spot - like 1.25 whole increments low spot. I thought I must have hit the jackpot of all gate signatures, so I started trying to amplify around the 37.5 mark when... the lock opened!!!! Therefore, the lock opened at 50-38-39.

I tried it again just to be sure, and sure enough, it opened. I checked my wife's written combo and that is exactly what it was. I got lucky twice with this lock - first my wife set the last two numbers one digit apart (even though I told her the last time she set a combo for me that they should be at least 10 digits apart for adjacent numbers in the combo - she must have forgotten!), so that is probably why I was able to find a gate with AWL (and probably a more pronounced gate signature than I would otherwise get - there were TWO gates lined up there!) - and not get the weird high spot due to the LaGard oval wheels. Second, I just arbitrarily set the first wheel to 50 since it was the middle of the big wide low spot. I would have still figured it out after I nailed down that the 2nd number was 38, but it was just weird to have it open when I thought I was just amplifying a gate signature.

So... victory for now, but I will have to have her reset it with a better combination.

[Jaakko Fagerlund]

When I got to 37.5 I found a SERIOUS low spot - like 1.25 whole increments low spot. I thought I must have hit the jackpot of all gate signatures, so I started trying to amplify around the 37.5 mark when... the lock opened!!!!

Yeah, I hate when that happens. In the middle of a good, serious, concentrated effort to map the wheels and WHAM, OPEN! I'm like "wwhhhaaaaat", slam it closed again and start over.

[subsonic1050]

Yeah, seriously! Way for the lock to ruin my fun prematurely! Haha, well I had my wife set a new combination, and this one is already giving me hell, so we will see if I can get it open again!

[jharveee]

Congratulations!

[Malekal]

grats! wish I could try that

[subsonic1050]

Hey thanks guys! I've since had my wife change the combo and given it a short amount of time - no joy yet. Now the wheels are masking one another, and I don't even have a promising low spot to try parking wheels at - it is a perfectly flat line apart from one slight high spot. I will give it another shot tonight or tomorrow.