Bypassing an ABUS 158KC/45 Combination Padlock

Why I Wanted to Bypass an ABUS 158KC/45 Combination Padlock

In year 5 and up at my school we are given a locker with an Abus 158KC/45 combination padlock. One of my best friends forgot her locker code and came to me to ask me if I could open it. Not sure why she would think I could get past a lock? ????  I said I would try even though i had never opened one of these locks before. I hadn’t even tried on my own lock at school. Here is my friend’s lock before I tried to bypass it.

ABUS 158KC/45 Combination Padlock

Researching the Bypass

After school I brought the lock home and started researching Abus combination padlocks, but sadly it didn’t have anything about these locks. There were a few other Abus combination padlocks but not this one. While I was researching I found out some interesting information and techniques about how to open similar locks. I thought since they were similar it might work on the ABUS 158KC/45 Combination Padlock too.

One of the things I found said that if you used a shim or a piece of a coke can between the dial and the body of the lock you would feel a flat side on the wheel. This was the key to working out the numbers.  I got out one of the shims we had in our tamper evident bag and slid it directly under the numbers. But sadly there was no flat spot.

The shim

The Bypass

I was worried they must have fixed the issue but I kept playing around and feeling if there was anything that would give away the number positions. Then i felt a small notch beneath one of the numbers. I tried the next one and slowly rotated the wheel until i could feel the same notch. I got all four of them but the lock didn’t open. One of the videos of the old Abus padlock said that when you had the four numbers aligned you needed to rotate all the wheels a few places until they were inline with the locking mechanism. I turned them all once. Nothing. Twice. Nothing. Three times. OPEN!!! I was so excited!

I still cant believe my friend forgot her code. It was 9991 ????

Once you have the lock open you can turn the shackle to the back, push in, and reset the combination. I did this so many times to practice, not looking when i was doing it so I didn’t know what the code was. Bypassing this lock never gets boring. Here is a video of how to bypass it. You can see me reset the lock at the beginning, align all the wheels, then turn all the numbers three times to open it.

Video of how to bypass the ABUS 158KC/45 Combination Padlock

After opening the lock the first time it was really easy and I kept on practicing to get faster and faster. My record to open it is 15 seconds. I even recorded it on my iPad ????

My fastest time!

I went slow in the video so you could see what I was doing. It’s fun doing it fast but sometimes I prefer to just take my time. An open is always awesome. I’m really glad that my friend asked me to ‘help’ with her lock.