Locksmith in Del Mar — under two square miles
Del Mar is smaller than people assume, and half of it empties and refills with the racing season.
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- California Locksmith Licence #7974
- Open 24 hours, 7 days
- Mobile — homes, cars and businesses
¿Necesita un cerrajero? Llámenos al (619) 703-0328 — abierto 24 horas, todos los días.
A very small city
Camino del Mar, the bluff and the fairgrounds
Interstate 5 bypasses Del Mar entirely. Everything runs on the old coast road.
The freeway went in during the 1960s and it deliberately misses the town, which means Camino del Mar — the old Highway 101 — is still the spine of the place. Tenth Street was the historic main corridor. At the north end, Jimmy Durante Boulevard runs across to the Del Mar Fairgrounds, home of the San Diego County Fair and the racetrack that gave the town the line about where the turf meets the surf. Via de la Valle takes you back to the 5.
What that adds up to on a working day is one road in and one road out, and during the fair or a race meeting that road does not move quickly. We will tell you honestly what it looks like when you ring instead of promising you a number.
Worth clearing up, because it catches people out: Del Mar Heights, up on the mesa above the freeway, is part of the City of San Diego rather than the City of Del Mar. If that is where you are, we still cover you — it just means the route is different and so is everything else about the property.
Second homes and old houses
Doors that stand empty, and doors that are a hundred years old
Two very different lock problems live in the same small town.
Old Del Mar, the historic Tudor-influenced district around Stratford Square — which went up in 1927 — is period housing, and period housing has period hardware. On a door like that the visible furniture is often the nicest thing about it and nobody wants it replaced with a builder's handle set. The right answer is usually to keep the outside and fix the inside: rekey the cylinder, service the mechanism, adjust the strike so the bolt stops fighting the frame.
The other pattern is seasonal. A large share of the housing here is second homes and holiday lets, and a door that nobody has opened since spring behaves differently to one used twice a day. Salt air gets into an unused cylinder just as fast, and the first person through it in months is the one who finds out. If a property changes hands between guests or tenants, rekeying is the only way to know what the working key count actually is.
Along the bluff — roughly forty feet above the sand for the best part of two miles, with the rail line running along the top of it — access is genuinely awkward in places. Dog Beach at the north end, from 29th Street up to the Solana Beach line, is where a lot of the lost-key calls come from. Sand does not give keys back.
Del Mar areas we cover
- Old Del Mar
- Camino del Mar
- The beach colony
- North Beach
- The fairgrounds end
- Jimmy Durante Boulevard
- Via de la Valle
Del Mar jobs
What a seasonal town calls in
Empty houses, old hardware, and keys that went into the sand.
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Old hardware, kept
On a period door we would rather keep what is there. Rekey the cylinder, service the mechanism, adjust the strike — the door looks exactly the same and starts working again.
- Lock repair
- Lock rekey
- Lock change and replacement
- Spare keys
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Keys lost at the beach or the races
A key in the sand at Dog Beach or gone at the fairgrounds is a common Del Mar afternoon. We make and program a replacement at the vehicle rather than sending it to a dealer.
- Lost keys
- Car key making, cutting and duplication
- Key fob replacement and programming
- Car lockouts
The full list
Everything we do
Residential, commercial and automotive. If it locks, we work on it.
- Car lockouts
- House lockouts
- Lost keys
- Ignition repair
- High security locks
- Key extraction / broken key extraction
- Lock repair
- Lock change and replacement
- Lock rekey
- Master keys
- Key fob replacement and programming
- Transponder key programming
- Car key making, cutting and duplication
- Spare keys
- Storage-unit and trunk openings
- Commercial and business security
Next door
North and south along the 101
Del Mar sits between the San Dieguito lagoon and Torrey Pines, with Solana Beach above and the city of San Diego below.
If you are actually in Del Mar Heights, say so — that is San Diego, and it is a different road in. Every job on this page is the same job on our emergency locksmith, residential locksmith and full locksmith services pages — this page is only about doing it here. The whole coverage map is on the home page.
FAQ
Del Mar questions
Is Del Mar Heights the same as Del Mar?
Not administratively. Del Mar Heights sits above the freeway and is part of the City of San Diego, while the City of Del Mar is the small coastal town below.
We cover both. It only matters because the route in is different and the housing is nothing alike — say which one you mean when you call.
The house has been shut up since spring and now the key will not turn.
That is a very Del Mar phone call. An unused cylinder near the ocean still takes in salt air, and without the daily wear of a key going in and out the grit just sits there.
Servicing usually brings it back. If you have a property that stands empty for months, having it looked at before the season rather than on the day you arrive saves a lot of standing about.
Can we rekey between guests?
Yes, and for a property that changes hands regularly it is the only honest way to know how many working keys exist.
Rekeying keeps your existing locks and re-pins them to a new key, so every set handed out previously stops working.
My front door is original and I do not want it changed.
Then we will not change it. On period doors the usual work is entirely internal — rekey the cylinder, clean and service the mechanism, adjust the strike plate so the bolt is not being forced.
If a part genuinely has to be replaced we will show you what and why before anything comes off the door.
What happens during fair or racing season?
The roads in and out of Del Mar get slow, and we are not going to pretend they do not. There is essentially one route along the coast and the fairgrounds traffic uses it too.
Call and we will tell you what the drive looks like at that moment. If it is bad, you will hear that from us before you commit.
Do you cover the beach colony on the sand?
Yes — houses, garages, gates and vehicles. The practical issue is where a van can stop, because parking on those blocks in summer is close to non-existent.
If you can point us at a spot, or meet us at one, it genuinely shortens the job.
Talk to us now
Camino del Mar to the fairgrounds.
Tell us the block and whether it is a house, a rental or a vehicle. Price first, and an honest word on the traffic.
(619) 703-0328Open 24 hours, 7 days. California Locksmith Licence #7974.
¿Necesita un cerrajero en San Diego? Llámenos al (619) 703-0328 — abierto 24 horas.