Re: The advantages of old cars No 237

Mike P wrote:
I did 250 miles up to my brother's house yesterday morning in my old MX-5. Nice journey, good weather. Had a brew with him, then went back out to get something out the boot. Put the key in the boot lock, turned it, it snapped. Now, this being a *** old car, I only got one key with it. I meant to get a copy cut a while ago, but never did.

I managed to get the snapped off part of the key out of the lock, but it was pretty mangled. Thoughts of losing a couple of days money while I arsed about getting keys and locks sorted, pissing my new employer off after I've just started or having my wallet raped to get a 24 hour auto locksmith out crossed my mind.

So, just out of curiosity, I took the mangled bits of key to Timpsons in Burnley. He fiddled with it for 1/2 hour, and cut me a perfect fitting key from two mangled bits for a fiver.

I wonder how much that would have cost me on a new car with coded keys etc. (if I was stupid enough to just have one key!)

Old cars are just ace.

Mike P

With my Ford Focus we got 1 full remote key, and 1 normal key. Bought a 2nd full remote key from eBay for about £20-£25. The manual explains how to get it to work with the remote central locking (so no charge to enable that). But you cannot (on the Mk2) get it to work with the immobiliser without going to the dealer (and paying £80+ for their minimum unit of labour I think).

So, what we did was to just cut off the key from the new remote, and used the existing key to start the car, with the new (now just the fob) being used for the remote part.

I don't know what the range of the transponder is, but it's worth checking whether a normal key (non-transponder) would work if the old fob/transponder was on the key ring.

D
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