MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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My car key. Arse.🤬
Just put it in a bag of rice in the airing cupboard. The question:
1. Will it work in the morning?
2. How much will it cost to replace/ have I saved if it works?
What do you all think?
I’m going with won’t work, £40 for a key and £60 to recode.
Got in a swimming pool with mine in my pocket. Took it out, opened up, gave it a good dry, blew it out with compressed air when I got home, still working months later. All hail the 13 year old v70!
Suspect this may not be the case with more modern things.... You have my sympathy.
What car?
Leon
Have done that twice with recent cars. BMW (2016) - £200, Audi(2020) - worked fine after drying out, still good a year later.
Washed several in the past. They were well sealed enough to be fine without further intervention.
I’ve been quoted £250 for a new Skoda key fob. The physical key is about £70 plus £180 to program it to the ECU.
Went swimming at the beach once with hire car keys in my pocket. Luckily it was mighty sunny & warm and they dried out within about an hour
1. Will it work in the morning?
2. How much will it cost to replace/ have I saved if it works?
1. Yes… once and then be dead forever.
2. For my Panda when I did the exact same thing quoted about £280 from Timpsons or £400 from the Fiat main dealers.
I’m unlocking my car the old fashioned way and have been for a while now.
@ iainc - your Audi gave me hope as I think the keys are the same but a different shape, then @ bigblackshed - it fell again. @ PiknMix - dealers just make it up as they go along, don’t they. I will wear my crappiest gardening clothes so hopefully will be charged the minimum extortionate amount!
I waded into a river in southern France with ours in my pocket, to pull Madame and canoe off a rock.
Not only was I worried about the key needing replacing, I suddenly remembered the spare was in Scotland 1000 miles north....
(They were fine, amazingly, as they were in water for at least 5 mins).
That’s hopeful then. The force of river flow should be greater than a washing machine. Fingers crossed the seal held.🤞
It works! Hopefully it will stay that way.
Worried at the price of new ones. Mrs FB “lost” * a set of our Seat’s keys. We’ve been running the risk with just 1 set hoping the others will turn up.
* drawback of keyless entry, the key gets left in a bag/coat pocket and not hung up with the others 😡. Sods Law it’ll turn up in a coat not worn for ages just after we finally get a replacement.
Only having one key is big risk. Two avoids the obvious that if you lose it damage it you don't have any. Three is good because on many cars (I know this for Fords) if you have 2 keys, any auto locksmith can programme a new key, but if you have one or none you have to go to the dealer and pay their prices. My car came with two, I had a spare made with the immobiliser chip but no remote, so it's fully waterproof and that's the one I take riding and paddling.
My dad put one of his keys "somewhere safe" for 5 years.
When I found out I offered to get him a new one cut and coded. The £200 quote from a Honda dealer was enough of a push to get him to find them : )
Good luck drying them out, I hope it works!
I swam in salt water with the Volkswagen keys in my pocket. Van started ran for a minute then immobiliser kicked in. New batteries in the key all good
Still working. Start and stop this morning, drove Micro to a party and back this afternoon, then over to a friends house this evening. So I hope this means I got away with it.
prompted by this thread to get 2nd key for my car so going to be 170 later this week sounds like a 'reasonable' price compared to above . good job ive not fallen for the jacket PSA yet!
@bsims if nothing else your misfortune has really helped me out.
Clearly your post opened up some unhealed wounds and I was grumpy that my remote still doesn’t work. So this afternoon with renewed vigour, I striped my key back to the pcb and used a cotton bud, and a single haired paintbrush doused in isopropanol and cleaned all the contacts and pcb.
It only bloody worked!
I’m actually so happy, and a little bit embarrassed that I didn’t even think to try this before.
Thank you for making me cross enough with myself to have this flash of inspiration (despite being several years after the great washing debacle).
Three is good because on many cars (I know this for Fords) if you have 2 keys, any auto locksmith can programme a new key, but if you have one or none you have to go to the dealer and pay their prices.
An auto locksmith programmed a new key for our Ford despite only having one original.
@PiknMix - that's excellent news and you have given us a fix in the STW armoury before getting fleeced for a easy to make mistake.