What if I lost my car keys?

Each owner of a vehicle must have two copies of its keys. This is one of the basic rules that will allow you to avoid unpleasant situations and the common question of what to do if you have lost your car keys.

But our life is full of surprises, which are not always positive. For example, the keys can be lost in another city or even country, and the second copy is at home, where there is no way or time to return. In this situation, some rules should be followed.

General recommendations

The main thing is not to panic. You need to remember the places where the car keys could have fallen out, and carefully examine the entire route along which you followed. If the search results are negative, you can ask for help from the information service or the administration of a company, a shopping center, or a hotel. They have the opportunity to make an announcement over the speakerphone, and if anyone finds the keys, they will surely return them to the owner.

A notice of the loss of the keys should be written and posted in the places where they supposedly disappeared. This may not give results, or the search will drag on for a long time, but it is still worth trying. If the keys are returned, you must definitely thank this person.

Recovering keys that are not equipped with a microchip

There are several options for dealing with the loss of such keys. It all depends on how the purchase and sale of the vehicle was carried out:

  1. car dealership;
  2. secondary market.

The car was bought at a dealership

If the car was purchased from an authorized dealer, you need to call and report the problem. The dealership will pick up a duplicate key, but for this you must specify the following information about the vehicle:

  • model;
  • year of acquisition;
  • state number;
  • VIN-number of a car.

It is best if the wine code was written out in advance on some piece of paper. Otherwise, the situation will become more complicated, since most often it is indicated on a plate in the engine compartment or in the cabin on the front doors.

We'll have to use the services of a tow truck and deliver the car to the dealership. But you must have documents with you confirming that the customer of the services really is the owner of the vehicle. In the center, representatives will pick up a duplicate key and open the locks. But it will not be cheap, and all expenses, of course, will have to be paid by the owner of the car.

What to do if you lose the keys to a car purchased "from hand"

If the vehicle was purchased on the secondary market, and there is no spare key, then you will have to contact an organization dealing with emergency opening of cars and subsequent production of duplicate keys for the lock cylinder. Specialists of such companies open locks of any complexity without any special difficulties, and this process does not take much time.

The advantages of this method include:

  • simplicity, since similar keys are used both for opening doors and for the ignition lock;
  • speed;
  • Lower cost compared to dealer key replacement.
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Difficulties arise with many Japanese car brands, the design of the lock cylinder which does not allow the manufacture of a duplicate key. You will need to purchase a kit consisting of an ignition lock, keys and a door lock cylinder at any disassembly, and install it.

Chip key recovery

The loss of a key with an embedded microchip, which is associated with the immobilizer in the car, is a more serious problem than the previous ones. Making a duplicate without a chip will not help in this case. It will be possible only to open the door, but to start the car will not work. But there are no hopeless situations.

What is a chip key?

The electronic key is equipped with a special microcircuit with a specific code. When the ignition is turned on, a signal is read from it, and the data is transmitted to the on-board computer. Only then is it possible to start the engine. If the radio signal is not received or sent, the immobilizer blocks the operation of the main systems of the car, and it simply does not start or stalls.

Chip key heads are more massive, some are equipped with buttons. The absence of buttons does not mean that the key does not have a chip. It is quite simple to check for its presence - you should wrap the head with foil (in several layers) and try to start the engine. If it does not start, the key is equipped with a chip.

It is recommended to restore a lost chip-key through an authorized dealer. When buying a vehicle, the owner is issued a special card with the codes of the radio and immobilizer. If it is not there, then you need to call a tow truck and transport the car to a car dealership. Recovering data on the immobilizer code is costly and time-consuming (from several weeks to a month), so it is better not to lose the card with the codes.

Is it possible to restore the chip key without the participation of an authorized dealer?

A few years ago, chipping was only done by the dealership. Today, the restoration of a lost key with a microchip is also performed by companies that have special programs with the help of which codes are selected for almost any immobilizer.

The restoration procedure consists of the following operations:

  1. adaptation of new keys to the electronics of the machine;
  2. deletion of data on the previous key from the system;
  3. recoding the immobilizer;
  4. Clears immobilizer errors.

In many cases, chipping can even be done on site, but sometimes it is required to take the vehicle to a service center. The cost of work depends on many factors, but compared to a refurbishment at a dealership, it is cheaper and much faster.

Useful video about chip key recovery:

There is only one conclusion - it is better not to lose the car keys at all, this will lead to additional financial costs and is fraught with the loss of recovery time. To protect yourself from such troubles, you should take care of making a duplicate.

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