How Motorcycle Keys Are Made

In this video, co-owner of NESSL, Cesar creates a key for a 2000 Kawasaki motorcycle. The customer came in after losing his key and left the motorcycle here at our locksmith shop to originate a key for him.

There are two ways to make a key when there’s no key present. One way is a fully manual process completely dependent on the skill of the locksmith. Although, our locksmiths are skilled enough to accurately produce a key this way, we find it is a better practice to rely on the precision of our electronic key makers, rather than the naked eye. The precision of cuts we can achieve with mechanic key-cutting insures that your key will work for years to come, and there will be no risk of damaging the interior mechanism of your motorcycle. Not to mention, the process of making a key manually puts a lot of stress of the lock itself, risking damage to the wafers inside the cylinder.

The other way to make a key in this situation is by decoding the lock with a specialized tool, as Caesar does in this video. It’s a cleaner process with no risk of damage to the lock.

First, we input all the information needed about the motorcycle’s make and model into our digital database to find out the key blanks spacing and depth as well as the quantity of cuts that the key requires. Then, we use the motorcycle key readers for this particular vehicle to determine the information needed to input into our electronic key cutter and produce a factory key.

Next, Cesar cuts the key on our ITL electronic key originator. Lastly, he tests the key on the motorcycle. As we can see in the video, the key works perfectly on all three of the locks present on the vehicle. We can always come to you to perform this service, but in this case, we had this customer’s bike in and out of our headquarters within an hour.

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