Timmy2 and WG. Thanks for the encouragement. I beat it down last night.
Armed with the counterintuitive to me lefty lock / righty unlock knowledge (thanks!) I turned the key to the right, pulled it out and squirted some PB Blaster up in there, waited an hour, whacked the key cylinder with a gaffer a few times and slowly twisted and pulled (really really hard) and it slowly came out. BTW, as mentioned, there is very little resistance in the lock mechanism. Very smooth.
Seems that it was indeed stuck inside the outer mousing by some weird gummy substance kinda like that stuff that sticks a new credit card to the mailing letter from the CC company. I’m thinking maybe someone tried to lube the assembly in the past, but they used the wrong stuff.
Next task - clean, lube and reinstall with a new cable. I’m also going to fab an emergency pull from the latch itself using a bicycle brake wire and route it for external access.
On to the next thing…
Thanks, Ed
