Having just bought a Jimny, with a different key for the ignition, I have been looking around for peoples experiences with resolving the issue.
Many people with a key broken in the lock, who ask for advice, never seem to quite get the actual advice they need, and end up just changing the whole lock with a different key, and then faff about with the transponder chip to ensure the immobiliser continues to function.
I don't know if anybody has posted this here or elsewhere, but this is what I did to rectify the issue.
Take off the steering lock after tapping off the shear bolts, this is the hardest part of the job.
On the side of the barrel holder there are two tiny Mills pins at roughly 90 degrees to each other which lock the key barrel to the lock casting,. You cannot remove these Mills pins, so you have to either drill them out, or if you have a Dremel drill kit, you will have a tiny tapered grinding wheel which grinds the pin down nicely. Grind or drill the Mills pins down without completely going down to the lock barrel, this leaves a little bit of the pin remaining when you remove the barrel, allowing you to remove the Mills pin remnant. The barrel is quite tight, so you will need to hold the lock mechanism in a vice, and using some sort of thin blunt drift, in the convenient notch at the key end of the barrel, tap the barrel out.
When it comes out be careful, there is a pivot locking bar that has a little square plate in the centre, this has a spring underneath it, be careful that the spring doesn't go airborne when removing this lever.
Carefully remove the barrel, put the key in if you can, this will secure the tumblers.
As this stage you may be able to manipulate a broken key out of the barrel, reassemble with a new key, and bob's your uncle.
If you already have a different key, or are going to replace the lock , the way to return the lock to the same key as the doors is the following.
Put the key in the barrel that matches the car doors , it will be noticeable that some of the tumblers are sticking out on both sides. For the barrel to function, all the tumblers need to be flush with the barrel. At this stage it is a matter of swapping the tumblers on one side that are sticking out with tumblers on the same side that are not sticking out as much. It is not an exact science, and at the end you will probably have a couple of tumblers sticking out a bit. Don't forget the keys are symetrical, so what you change on one side to get the desired affect, will have to be repeated on the other side. If you have bought a second hand lock, you will obviously have spare tumblers to play with, and may not have to carry out the following procedure.
Once you have got the tumblers as low as you can, carefully file down the tumblers to get them level with the barrel casting, I personally found it was easier to slide each tumbler out that needed filing, just be careful you don't lose the little tumbler return spring. The springs are all quite sticky with grease, so they shouldn't fall out, but they might come out stuck to the tumbler.
Once you have all the tumblers level, and the the barrel is turning in the lock smoothly with the desired key, then reverse the procedure..You will have to sort out something to replace the Mills pins, but that should be easy enough.
Although you have filed down some of the tumblers, this does not impact on the integrity of the lock as even after filing down the tumblers all still come out way past the 0.5mm or so that locks the barrel.
Hope this helps
Cheers
Raddiy
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