Prepare your summer holidays by lockpicking a motorhome

I never thought I would do a post about lockpicking, as I am very beginner in this field, but here we are.

Context time

A friend explained me he wanted to prepare his summer vacation in his motorhome, but lost his keys ! Yes, even the spares ! Since he heard I know my way in lockpicking, he asked if I could do anything about it.

My friend could change the barrel locks, but first needed the doors to be open (or would be forced to damage them). “Didn’t you call a locksmith ?”, I asked ; my friend called three of them, and none would do the job (maybe because it is a vehicule and this needs to be handled by a mechanic ? not sure on this).

I want to be clear on my lockpicking level : I manage to lockpick these training transparent locks, and that’s about it. So I told my friend he shouldn’t expect anything, but I was willing to try it just for fun.

Heist time

My adversary is a motorhome from the “Pilote” brand, issued between 2010 and 2015. Not the lastest shiny model, but certainly not an antiquity.

I grab my torsion wrench and a simple rake, apply a tension toward left and start raking for 30-ish seconds, and bam ! The torsion wrench turn a quarter. I barely believed it, finished to turn the wrench and pulled the door open ! I even got a second surprise, when an alarm has gone off.

My friend installed an alarm and forgot to tell me about it (and lost the spare alarm remote control, so he couldn’t disable it beforehand). As far as I know, when this alarm is armed, it is triggered when a door is opened.

Once inside the vehicle, we only had to unscrew open the alarm case to remove batteries to shut it down.

Now the motorhome is open, that’s cool, but the job isn’t done yet; there is another door and a few hatches to open. Most hatches are easy to open and only need up to a minute each to open (reminder : I am a total noob).

But then there is this second door and the back hatch ; those have an additional lock from the “Thule” brand as pictured :

For reference, there is the Thule lock shop page

My friend thought these Thule locks would be harder to lockpick, and they indeed looked tougher, but they were actually not harder to pick than the other locks.

In a few minutes I managed to open every locks on the motorhome. I finally tried a bit to open the fuel cap but didn’t succeed. At this time I am not sure if this one needed a specific key.

Secure time

Why did the manufacturer use locks that cheap ? That is a mystery to me. But what lessons can be learned here ?

• You may want to change natives locks for better ones
• Install an alarm with its own batteries, and a one that can remotely warn you if possible
• Don’t store any valuable in your motorhome
• Pretty much any safety advice we can give for a car