Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:54 pm by Lauren
I am always refining my own processes for decoding these "Champion" padlocks. There are two techniques for probing the gates. The first one involves inserting the probe between two levers, but sometimes there is not enough space between levers to do so, even with the smallest of wires. The second technique, as shown in this thread, involves inserting the probe on top of a neighboring lever and rotating it into the gate. However, I believe the information originally shown in this thread is flawed and somewhat misleading, even though the basic fundamentals for decoding were well described by the author. The problem is in the third picture showing the second lever being probed which translated into a .165 depth cut. This picture must have been taken with the fence removed. In reality, there is not enough lever displacement capability to expose this gate before bottoming out. This issue usually occurs with all depth cuts greater than .105 inch. When decoding "Champion" padlocks, the easier locks are always the ones with depth cuts less than .105 inch. I recently was exposed to this problem on one of my project locks, the one without the pin above the letter "H".
Last edited by Lauren on Sat Jun 15, 2013 2:39 am, edited 1 time in total.