Away from the noise and activity of your home city, you travel about to enjoy the outdoors and get rid of your worries. Once you’ve located the perfect spot, you sit down and relax.
Everything seems so peaceful and perfect! But then disaster strikes, you can’t find your keys anywhere on you. You struggle as you don’t know what to do to re-enter your vehicle.
However, there is nothing to panic about. Today’s post will show and instruct you on several ways to unlock a caravan without keys.
Let’s start and learn how to unlock a camper door without a key!
Ways to Unlock a Camper Door Without a Key
Perhaps the most frequent cause of camper lockouts is lost or misplaced keys. Spend some time looking for the lost keys by recalling your day.
If you can’t locate the keys, check with the staff at the office on the campsite to check if anyone has found and turned in the lost key to the camper door you own.
You might be surprised by how many ways to unlock a door without a key. The following guide will help you avoid becoming stranded outside your RV.
1. Try to find other openings
You might forget that your camper also has an emergency window and back door. Try those entrances to see if you can pry them open. When you find these spots, use either a screwdriver, pliers, or a small chisel, whatever you have in hand to pry the door.
You can now crawl in and inspect everything once the pried space is large enough. and if you find the strapped keys there, you can open the camper door from the inside.
2. Picking And Open The Lock
Also, you can always try picking the lock with a bobby pin to open it. This method would require steady hands and patience to pull off. So if you are confident enough, this is how to do it!
Tools:
Just two bobby pins will do the trick to pick a camper lock (paper clips or thin wires also work well)
Step 1: Understand How The Lock Works
Understanding how the lock works before attempting to pick it allows you to manipulate it and open the door.
A deadbolt lock typically consists of two parts: the barrel that serves as the lock’s hole and the pins that push against it.
When you insert and turn the key, the pins slide up and out of the way to open the door.
And that is exactly what you must do when picking a lock: remove all the pins from the barrel’s path.
Step 2: Prepare The Components
First, make a pick and a lever out of the tools you have at hand (a bobby pin, a paper clip, or a piece of wire).
The lever will spin the barrel and replace the key while the pick is used to press the pins.
The bobby pin should be straightened before being folded at one end to resemble a handle. The lever is made by bending the pin at a right angle.
Step 3: Push The Lever Inside The Lock
Put your lever into the lock’s bottom half. Insert the bent end into the lock’s bottom, keeping it as low as you can while still inserting the lever into the barrel.
Step 4: Release The Mechanism
When the lever has been inserted into the barrel, you should handle it like the camper lock key.
To prevent the lever from becoming stuck within the barrel once you have opened the door, be careful not to apply too much pressure when moving the lock.
Try both directions if you need clarification on which way the lock rotates. The incorrect orientation causes clicking noises and a little grinding feeling.
Step 5: Put The Pick In
Put your pick in with the bent side facing up and feel around for the pins. As you raise and lower the pick, the lever should still be in position serving as a support.
Push the pins up and away from the pick by pushing it back and forth repeatedly.
If the pins are completely immobile, remove the lever from the keyhole, slightly loosen the right angle, and re-insert it. By reducing the tension, the pick can better drive the pins up.
Step 6: Push All The Pins And Open The Door
As the pick comes in contact with each pin, push it up until you hear the pin click.
Next, insert the pick farther into the lock so that you may raise the following pin. Up to the final pin in the lock, keep repeating this.
3. Drilling The Lock
If you’ve done it all and the lock is broken or jammed, the best thing left to do yourself now is to remove the old lock and replace it with a new one.
Although it might cost you a bit to buy a new one, drilling out RV door lock is a fast and effective way to break into a camper. Here’s how to do it!
Tools:
A drill and a 3/8-inch metal drill bit are required to drill out the door lock.
Step 1: Prepare The Tools
Insert the drill bit into the drill and make sure it’s sturdy. You can wear glasses and gloves for protection if they are available.
Step 2: Drilling The Lock
Once you are ready, turn the drill on directly in the center of the lock’s keyhole!
There might be some resistance to the drill during drilling, so keep your hand steady!
Step 3: Check To Open
Once you feel the drill hole is deep enough, take the drill out and check if you can unlock the door.
If the door is still stuck, you might have to drill even deeper or utilize a larger drill bit.
- Tip/Note
Once you have a busted lock, remember to install a new one. You can purchase a new lock with extra keys that you can store in a secret lockbox outside the camper.
Having a keyless lock might be better if you often misplace the keys. You would just need to input a code to unlock the RV’s door using this kind of lock.
4. Contact A Locksmith
Before attacking the door and try to break it, you can always call a locksmith to unlock the door for you. Just google “RV locksmiths near me” to see if there are any nearby. Contact them, and they should quickly arrive to do the job.
You can get an RV master key for the lock made by them if you can not find the original one in your vehicle. If a locksmith isn’t available, ask a towing company if they provide locksmith services. (Tips: don’t forget to rekey your RV locks to avoid this situation)
Be prepared to pay from $70 to a whopping $200 if the locksmith is far from your camping site.
Conclusion
Practically everyone who owns a camper has experienced being locked out.
With all the methods provided in this article, we hope that you will make it through and get access to your camper once again.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve rented an RV before or are doing so for the first time this weekend; handling a lockout is a crucial skill.
Furthermore, after making the error once, it’s improbable that you’ll repeat it.
And even if you do it again, now you know how to unlock a camper door without a key!
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more awesome content!
Welcome to a new journey! I am Rober Clark, also a full-time RV-er and currently exploring the US with Dane. I have four years of working as a contractor, so building a home inside the RV is an extremely rewarding task for me. I find new challenges and new limits to break every day.