How to Replace Ignition Lock Cylinder 2001-05 Chrysler PT Cruiser

Brought to you by 1AAuto.com. Your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet. Hi. I'm Mike Green. I'm one of the owners of 1A Auto. I want to help you save time and money repairing and maintaining your vehicle. I'm going to use my 20 plus years experience restoring and repairing cars and trucks like this to show you the correct way to install parts from 1AAuto.com. The right parts installed correctly. That's going to save you time and money. Thank you and enjoy the video. In this video, we're going to show you ignition lock cylinder replacement, as well as recoding it for your existing key. We're going to do this on this 2001 PT Cruiser, but it is the same for a whole bunch of different Chrysler models. Tools you'll need are a 10 millimeter wrench to unhook your battery. Then you'll be able to get by with just a small flathead screwdriver, and a pair of pliers, as well as a nice clean workbench to work on.

Start out by disconnecting your battery. Undo 2 clips that hold the air box down. Lift it up. Then magically a 10 millimeter wrench appears and loosen up that battery cable. Then pull it right up and off, and move it out of the way. If your lock cylinder is giving you trouble, to remove it, after you've disconnected the negative battery cable, there's a hole right underneath the lock cylinder. You want to turn your vehicle to run. I'm poking up in here. There's a little button you want to press. When you find it... Just poking to see if I can find it. Straight up in there. I actually already found it. Press it up and the lock cylinder comes out to about there. Put your screwdriver right under. Pry up a little bit, and there's your lock cylinder out. New lock cylinder from 1A Auto. It comes with a key, if you don't mind having a different key. You need to turn it to the run position. Insert it. Now your original key will no longer work. If you want your original key to work, I'll show you how to do that.

If you want your old key to work in your new lock cylinder, the first thing you're going to have to do is take your old lock cylinder out. There's 2 little buttons here. First, I'm going to make sure this is all the way back. I'm going to turn it to the run position. I'm going to stick a fingernail in there. This is kind of the caveman way to do it. A fingernail in there. Then I'm going to spin this back beyond... I didn't quite get it far enough. I'll stick a fingernail on top of there and a fingernail on top of there. Spin this back beyond its auxiliary position and it pulls out. This is my old lock cylinder, so I'll put that off to the side. Now what I want to do is... You can see when I take the key out here that my tumblers are going to come up. I want to start on this side top. You can see that the tumblers come up. The first tumbler is closer to the lock cylinder, so I want to start with that one.

What you want to do is get those tumblers down. Pair of good needle nose pliers. Pull it up. Pull each tumbler up and out. Be careful of the springs. Spring out there as well. Next one. Tumbler's kind of stuck down. Use a small screwdriver to push though from the other side. Pull it out. We're going to repeat that for the other two on that side. That's the side closer. Now we're going to do the bottom side. I'm going to line these up. Because they're further away, I'm going to line them up a little further away. Now I'm going to take my new one apart the same way. If you lay your tumblers out like this, you should be able to see... Can't even see it on this one. Let's see. Clean it off. You should be able to see it says 0 1 right there. What you want to do, I have my tumblers laid out here, you want to have the same corresponding numbers. Here's all my 1s. I'll put a new one here. I'll just lay out all my new tumblers in the exact same spots as my old ones.

I've matched them up. This one I can't read the number, because it's too worn. Not really a problem, because what you can do... I'm going to slide it down here. There's 2 basic shapes. There's a single tooth, and then there's a dual tooth. The dual tooths are either 1s or 2s. The single tooths are either 3s of 4s. What you can do is flip your original over and bring your new one right next to it, and see how it lines up. I'm going to take it right in close here. You can see that that 4.... Hopefully I can focus in here. The 4 is just a little bit lower on the tooth. Slide the 3 up in place. Get it nice and perfect here. You can see that the 3 lines up very well. We will use the 3 here.

Here's our new lock cylinder. I've kept the springs in it. This is the top side. You can see the slot with the springs are closer. I'm going to grab each one, slide them down in. You always want to use the new tumblers, because usually the reason your lock cylinder wasn't working is because the old tumblers were worn out. New tumblers on that side. Flip it over. Grab them one by one. This side goes to the spring. It's what holds on the spring. If I coded this correctly, when I stick my old key into the new cylinder, all my tumblers should be down. New lock cylinder and a new cylinder here. All goes together fine, so that's the right code. Old key, new lock cylinder. Put it in. Make sure you're on the run position. Reinsert. Turn the key off. Just fast forward a little bit as we put the negative battery cable back on, and then tighten it up with our 10 millimeter wrench. Once you have it nice and snug, put the top of the air cleaner box back on. Clamp it into place.

We hope this helps you out. Brought to you by www.1AAuto.com. Your source for quality replacement parts and the best service on the internet. Please feel free to call us toll-free 888-844-3393. We're the company that's here for you on the internet and in person.