No need to apologize for asking questions... thats what this site is all about. And everyone here at one time or another was a new owner here.
We didn't have the luxury of a formal site, or the field experience of all the owners, with proven facts to back everything up with.
In the early days (yahoo site dealer 38), lots of owners more than willing to offer ideas, and fixes, and anyone from those days now knows that many of the ideas were bandaids, or out and out didn't work. Plus a lot of the theories out of that era are now reversed. But they were all excepted by this community, as the resources were few and far between.
Thats not to say there are more than one way to approach or fix an issue still to this day. A lot of times there are.
As for your uncanny luck on reaching Jamie/Marty on the phone, I promise you, they are not screening their calls. They do get very busy, and they don't mind chatting with anyone who calls. Their shop is built on the side of their home, and their home is in beautiful back country..... so no, they don't have a technical telephone system. its just a simple house phone. Keep trying....
Sorry for the length of this answer JK... but I have the time, and I'm not sure a lot of owners know about the current and future of our Keys...
From what I understand, if you don't have the rubber OEM fob from the lock company, you cannot get another key... plain and simple. I'm no machinist, but to me, this looks like you could get a machinist to make a key copy. But evidently no, because, I'm not the first owner to think of this...
In fact, from what I understand, even the factory will not pursue another key anymore even if you have that rubber fob with the secret numbers? anyone know this or verify? And when we could do this, it was rather pricey.... $65/key
sounds all doom and gloom.
But we have another issue, that has a nice answer that helps us with our key issue.
Atlantic EH has an updated ignition/lock set. I don't know all the details myself, but have talked to Jamie/Marty 3 times in the past week about my imploded ignition switch (a couple of weekends ago). They have no more OEM ignition switches.
And they are not making anymore "Stamos" beefed up ignition switches...... ("we have not made a penny on any of the "stamos" kits"). They used to send that out as a kit, and had to stop doing that, as most of the folks recieving the kit, couldn't put it together, which in turn made the owners call Atlantic EH for assistance, which in turn was timely. Jamie says it works good, but is difficult to assemble, if you haven't done one before.
Our ignition housings are weak at best by design. They are very pretty, but won't hold up to the vibrations of our engines. We have 3 X's here, and 525 was the last one to go at 35 thousand miles. Our other 2 the switches went at less than 10 thousand. What I'm saying here by example, its most probable you will eventually loose your ignition switch, or at least the major parts to it, while riding down the road..... all of us.
It appears Jamie/Martys new switch (Its not that new, its new to me), has its own keys? It looks very much like our OEM switches, and is bullet proof from the vibrations. From what I've seen its nice.
As with all of our updated parts and such, they are a little pricey, ... that has to be expected, buiding from the ground up.
So, lets say you want a pristine all OEM X for your stable, and want to ride it when you get the mood? I'd suggest everyone that can afford it, to pull their OEM switch, and put it somewhere safe, and get one of the Jones, new updated switches for everyday use. That would be my suggestion, based from my opinion. LOLOl!!!.... no I make "0" commision off of Atlantic EH sales.... and as buried Jamie/Marty get with X work, I'm sure they are going to regret me posting this. LOLOLOL.
2 options..... keep an eye on Ebay.... those locksets and ignition switches still show up time to time (complete), and take the chance of riding with your second switch (that it won't fail), AND like I did to get 35 thousand miles out of my switch...... keep it very well lubed.
Ran over on this JK.... but I hope this helps your answer on the key issue....
Bruce
