Motorcycle Keys in Concord

A bike with no key is a harder problem than a car with no key, because leaving it parked and dealing with it next week is not really an option. These calls come from the motorcycle rows at Concord BART, from carports behind the fourplexes on Detroit Avenue, from Sun Terrace garages that face straight onto the street where everything happens in view of the neighbors, from the lot beside Newhall Community Park at the end of a Sunday ride toward the mountain, and from racks outside the shops on Salvio Street. Keys are made at the machine for Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Harley-Davidson, Triumph, BMW, Ducati, KTM, Vespa and most scooters, working from the ignition or from a lock code, with no trailer involved and no waiting on a parts counter.

Because a bike can be wheeled away by one person, proof of ownership comes before anything else: a registration, a title or an insurance card against your identification, and a photograph on a phone serves as well as the paper. After that the code is lifted, from the ignition where it can be read and from the seat lock or a helmet lock where it cannot, and the blade is cut on the spot. Most bikes left the factory with a single key serving every lock, so the new blade is offered to each of them in turn and any lock replaced somewhere in the machine history gets pointed out, since knowing about it now beats finding it in a parking lot later. Bikes with an immobilizer need the chip written beside the machine, and Honda HISS, BMW EWS, the Ducati red-key setup and the newer keyless systems are all handled at the curb. The fork lock is tested repeatedly at the end, because a blade cut a hair shallow will bind there before it binds anywhere else, and correcting it takes minutes on the day and a second visit if it is missed.

The range for motorcycle keys is $112 to $259 per key, and the $89 service call sits inside it. A mechanical key for an older Honda or a scooter is the $112 end. Transponder keys, and immobilizer machines with nothing left at all where the module itself has to be read, are the $259 end. A barrel too badly damaged to read is priced on its own line before any work begins. Weekends carry no addition; only the evening and overnight ones apply, putting that first key at $152 after 8pm and $187 after midnight, and you hear whichever applies while you are booking.

You call and give the street and what the bike is doing: make, model and year, whether it has an immobilizer, whether any key still exists, and which garage, carport or lot it is standing in. The figure is said on the call. The van leaves Todos Santos Plaza, and a text names the technician and gives a thirty-minute window; sixteen to thirty-one minutes covers Concord. Ownership first, then the blade, then the chip where the bike needs one, then the five locks in order: ignition, fuel cap, seat, helmet lock, fork. The receipt carries the figure you were given, sent from beside the bike.