Fixing Broken Glove Compartment Locks

Broken glove compartments can give you a ton of stress in regular life; after all, a working glove compartment is an essential part of keeping secure documentation in your car. Here’s a brief guide to fixing stuck glove compartment locks as prepared by the automotive locksmith experts at Golden Locksmith.

Stuck Glove Boxes

Does your glove compartment not open? There’s many ways that your glove compartment can get jammed. The latch is possibly not alligning with the handle or cylinder, so even if the lock itself is in the unlocked position, the lock is jammed. Or possibly, the cylinder is spinning without end or the key is not fully going into the cylinder. Before you can remedy a stuck glove compartment, you need to find a way to get it open so that you can work with all the internal components of the glove compartment and see exactly what area is failing.

Glove Compartment Won’t Shut

Make sure that in this scenario, it’s not just a matter of the latch being blocked by an obstruction inside, for example, if the glove compartment has way too much stuff in it. It could also be an issue of slipping, meaning that every time you close the glove compartment it reopens and pushes the catch away from the glove compartment lock, or that the plastic of the lid has worn off so it can’t be gripped by the lock itself.

Quick Glove Compartment Tips

  • Try contacting a professional locksmith to rekey your car with the same keys as the glove compartment to make the entire process much easier.
  • Every car’s glove compartment is installed in a different way, so remedies and fixing maneuvers are not necessarily matched by two different makes and models of cars.
  • Some Acura and Honda car makes glove boxes can be opened with a simple screwdriver.
  • The method of opening almost every glove compartment box requires you to access the latch and depress it – which will open the glove compartment.

Replacing Glove Compartments

This would be the route to take if none of the above mention remedies/causes were applicable. In order to get a worthwhile glove compartment replacement, contact a professional locksmith team. This is a way smarter approach then attempting to fix the glove compartment yourself once you measure factors including ease of repair, efficacy of DIY repair, the amount of time it will take for a professional, and how easily an amateur can acquire the necessary equipment. It’s not as easy as unscrewing something and screwing it back in – the disassembly really requires some expertise, so contacting a professional automotive locksmith is definitely your best bet. What’s necessary is to determine what parts of the glove compartment are broken, to acquire replacement parts, to disassemble it, replace the broken parts with the fresh ones, reassemble it, and test it. As a final note, we encourage using a locksmith for this service, as the glove compartment locks they provide you with (if you choose to go down the route of car security) will be much more secure than the aftermarket glove compartment locks that people can purchase in stores.