Lexus Trunk Lockout

Normally, for an experienced locksmith technician, automotive lockout services are pretty easy jobs to do. Even for the novice locksmith technician it shouldn't be to hard to unlock most makes and models. When a customer accidentally lock his car while the keys are inside still in the ignition or on the seat for example, all that a locksmith technician have to do is get through one of the doors using various specialty tools. However, when a customer lock the keys to his vehicle inside the trunk, that is when things start to get a little trickier.

I remember few years back I got called to unlock the trunk on a 95 Lexus model. These vehicles were always a little hard for me to work on since most of them has high security lock system, but since I didn't have any job on me that day, I decided to accept the job and try to make another customer happy. I took the customer's information and started heading out to his location.

Once I got to the customer, I asked him what exactly happen and he told me he accidentally drop the keys inside the trunk without noticing as he was putting away his shopping and closed the trunk behind him. Since I knew this model was equipped with a trunk release lever, I knew that all I had to do was unlock the vehicle and use the trunk release to open the trunk. However, for that to work, the alarm must be unarmed and luckily it was.

After I got my tools from the van, I had the vehicle opened and couple of minutes, but when I went to pull the trunk release lever, it didn't work for some reason. At that point I had to figure out a way to get to the trunk which didn't include drilling the lock, so I called another Boise locksmith friend of mine to see maybe he can get me to the right direction for unlocking trunk.

When I got my locksmith friend on the phone, he mentioned that there is a way to manually pop the trunk open. He said that if I will access the trunk release mechanism by taking the dashboard part that close to it. Once I will have an access to the mechanism he said, I would have to remove the locking clip and push the spring loaded tab. After I did all the process explained to me, I was able to manually pop the trunk by pushing the spring loaded tab and retrieve the customer his keys from the trunk.

Lexus Lockout Tips

One of the issues I constantly ran into during my years as a locksmith technician servicing a Lexus LS400 is unlocking the trunk in a case where the customer locked the keys inside the trunk. It seem like even after I would unlock the car, the Valet-Lockout cylinder will still be locked. Going to the back of the valet-lockout  will be required  by lowering the bottom part of the driver side dash. On the back of the cylinder there will be a wire clip the slightly wraps around the cylinder. The clip would need to be removed and the plastic retainer would need to be depressed. The cylinder will then pop to the open position

In another situation I ran into, the valet-lockout cylinder will be unlocked, however the trunk would still not open. I found that the reason for such case its because the factory alarm system will shut down some of the operations in which the on-board computer control. Once both doors are closed, the vehicle's alarm system will instantly re-lock them. In order to re-operate the computer again, the alarm would need to be reset. In order to do this, either one of the door panels would need to be removed, following by detecting the wires that go from the cylinder and jump the lead until the alarm will reset. It is important to mention that there is no sign into when the alarm is resetting, so it will be necessary to pay close attention. Once it will reset, the trunk release button will work when activated.
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