Lishi HU66 Gen 1, 2, 3 – What’s the difference?

Support: lishi hu66 version 1 vs. version 2 vs. version 3

The face cap of the gen 3 lock is sunken and flush with the body of the lock, and the gen 3 lock is also much bigger and a totally different shape to the gen 1 and 2 locks next to it.

This makes it instantly identifiable visually – it is the only one of the VAG HU66 locks that can be simply identified by appearance.

VAG locks follow 2 different wafer configurations:

• Gen 1 lock follows a 1 up 1 down configuration
• Gen 2 and 3 locks follow a 2 up 2 down configuration

As we can easily identify the generation 3 lock visually, we only need to understand how to ID the difference between the gen 1 and 2 lock.

To do this we must:

1. Fully insert the 2in1 pick into the lock
2. Move the lifter to position 1 and find the spring
3. Assuming the spring wafer is felt on the bottom grid
4. Move the indicator to position 2
5. If the spring wafer is also felt on the bottom grid then it has 2 wafers on same side of lock in a 2 up 2 down format, so it is a gen 2 or 3 lock. If the spring wafer had been felt on the top grid then this would signify a 1 up 1 down configuration – so would be a generation 1 lock

(So, the gen 3 lock can be identified visually, but to tell the difference between the gen 1 and gen 2 lock you must feel using the tool.)

This is an almost instant confirmation of which lock we have in front of us.