this is the lock-picking lawyer and what
i have for you today is a restore power
trailer coupler lock I received this
lock from Peter in Charleston South
Carolina who tells me that he uses the
same make and model of lock to secure
his boat trailer and he was curious as
to what it would take to break into one
of these with a brute-force attack
that's what we're going to be doing
today but before we start I have to say
Peter you need a new lock I can tell you
just by looking at this that there's a
number of vulnerabilities first we have
a wafer core here that can easily be
raked open I'd imagine it's not going to
take more than a couple of seconds there
we go then we have a ratcheting locking
mechanism and generally ratcheting
mechanisms are not a good thing because
they can often be shimmed with something
like this and if I just slide this into
position there we go we should be able
to slide that shackle out now other than
that we have a couple of problems with
the construction this appears to be made
out of cast zinc which can easily be
melted with a normal plumbing torch or
certainly cut with almost any kind of
saw then we have a tiny little pin that
holds the wafer core in that probably
means we could yank that right out with
the slide hammer and with the way this
lock core sticks out I'd imagine we may
even be able to break that off just by
hitting it with a hammer but we're gonna
go a little bit overkill today and see
if we can break this open with the RAM
set now for those of you who aren't
familiar with it a ram set is a
powder-actuated nail driver which
harnesses the power of a 22 blank shell
that you load right about here to press
a piston forward that piston in turn can
drive a specially designed hardened
steel nail into steel or concrete what
we're gonna do is load one of those 22
blank shells and allow that piston to
move forward unimpeded by a nail and
strike this lock the strike point is
going to be right on the top of the
cylinder there and we're going to see if
we can break the coupling between the
cylinder
the shackle such that we can open this
up so let's take all this down to the
garage and see what happens okay we're
out in the garage and I have a trailer
coupler here in my vise
so let's Lock this Reese tope our
coupler lock to it it's a relatively
easy lock to use you can see once it's
in place even if we open up the the lock
that comes with the coupler this can't
come off therefore you can't get a
trailer hitch into the coupler okay now
that we've got this on here let's take
our RAM set we're gonna load it up with
one of our yellow tip shells and I'm
gonna hit it right about there see if I
can find a good angle for this and three
two one okay we hit it pretty good and
it seems to have survived the first hit
though I certainly see a crack let's
load it up one more time
three-two-one okay I think that did the
trick so that core was completely
shattered off of here and and yeah this
aristos power lock didn't hold up for a
long so Peter you have your question the
answer to your question this would not
hold up long to a ram set attack as for
other attacks you could pretty easily
cut any piece of this off with a normal
saw so a more realistic attack with
which might involve a hacksaw would
probably be be pretty pretty easy to
perform they could probably melt the
side of this with a propane torch in
some you need a better lock that's all I
have for you today if you do have any
questions or comments about this please
put them below if you like this video
and would like to see more like it
please subscribe and as always have a
nice day thank you