I live in Brazil and recently traveled to Florida, where I bought a GUNVAULT MVB 1000 BIOMETRIC GUNSAFE. I LOVED IT!!! It was beautiful, sturdy (some will beg to differ, but to me it's great to keep my handgun away from children and reckless curious people who may be visiting me and my family, and grants very quick access to my handgun), and it worked great... for about 3 days.
So there I was for a week paying a visit to Mr. Mickey Mouse and when time came to return home I placed my beautiful GUNVAULTMVB 1000 carefully packed into my suitcase and returned to Rio.
So when I got home I went straight to my suitcase, unpacked my adorable gunsafe, slid my finger on the reader and...... nothing happened. Actually I could hear the motor working and could see the lid trying to open, but it remained locked in place. So I used the key and was able to open it.
All of you GUNVAULT owners must imagine how angry I was by now.
I then noticed that if I shook it up a little and put it upside down it would SOMETIMES work. So all I needed to do was install the safe on my ceiling and the MVB 1000 would work perfectly about 30% of the time, but for some reason my wife wouldn't let me do that. Go figure...
So I was tired after flying for about 10 hours and extremely upset about my safe, so I decided to sleep it off.
On the following day, after coming from work I weighed my options:
1- contacting GUNVAULT in the US, perhaps sending the safe back over for repair, spending some money on shipping and maybe, only maybe getting my MVB 1000 back in perfect condition;
2- looking for a GUNVAULT specialist in Rio (didn't happen); or
3- Googling up for a solution.
So I decided on # 3. Found a lot of people complaining about similar problems and complaining about GUNVAULT's customer service. So that ruled out option #1. If they can't solve the problems of people in the US I figured they wouldn't do much for me.
None of those people with similar problems indicated a neither a solution, nor someone who was able to repair the safe for them. So that made me give up on #2 also.
Quite distressed and figuring things couldn't get much worse, I decided to disassemble the safe and see what I could do. And what I found was amazing!!!
The GUNVAULT mechanical system is actually extremely simple. Only a few parts. Testing the system I noticed that the electronics were ok (and that was quite a relief!) so the problem had to be mechanical.
Up here is a picture of the system. To the left we have the motor and a little wheel attached to it. The wheel pulls down on what I called a "release spring". Once this spring moves down the latch that locks the safe is released and the safe opens up. The spring is also activated by the key lock which we see to the right.
So there I was for a few minutes trying to figure out what was wrong until the moment I noticed that the wheel had actually moved to the right and was blocking the "release spring's" way as in the picture below.
So all I had to do was to move the wheel to the left and get it out of the spring's way!!!
I tested the safe and ...... CLICK!!! It worked perfectly. Then I understood why it would sometimes work when I shook it and put it upside down. The wheel would go back to its correct position.
But now, how was I supposed to keep the wheel in place? I had to keep it there somehow so, to make the story short, I went around the house looking for something to keep it in place until I got to the kitchen and found perfect solution - and I hope this will also solve the problems a lot of you guys and gals are having with this equipment.
So down here are the steps I took to keep the little wheel in place.
I cut a little piece of a kitchen sponge used to wash dishes and stuck it between the wheel and the base plate where the latch is mounted. I made it long enough so it won't slide back and forth once the cover is put back in place.
So now my GUNVAULT MVB 1000 is working flawlessly as it did during its first 3 days.
Hope this post will help many of you out there. If it does, please leave a comment. It's been a pleasure.
Good luck and take care.
Oh, by the way, come visit RIO DE JANEIRO for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. You'll love this place!!!
