Problems with your Mini central locking? 3

About a year ago we bought an ASBO on wheels, also known as the BMW Mini R53, a 1.6 litre engine with a supercharger. It looks like a Granny car, especially in this pale metallic blue, but it’s far from it.

It might be a twenty plus years old car, but it still really pulls. I adore classic Minis, always will, but with my health slowly declining, driving little Mavis really hurts. I feel every bump and can barely walk after an hour driving her. The nearest to the classic is the first generation BMW Mini – in size and character. We had the Mini One R50 for a while, size wise it wasn’t much bigger than the classic, and still had a lot of original Mini spirit, but this was the poverty spec of the first generation BMW Minis. The R53 is a Copper S, and it was built as a bit of a sleeper in my opinion. It’s got the insane go kart feel, but is road legal so we upgraded. And when you put your foot down with the window open you can really hear that supercharger whine.

One thing our old R50 had was working central locking, which is unusual for these old cars. The keys, and the key receivers are weak, and they fail. Sometimes you might be lucky and get away with just re-shelling your key, and it’ll function, or maybe just require the button pressing and ignition on off reset job. Normally though it’s the key and the receiver that have both failed. You can get a new receiver on eBay, I’d suggest going to one of the big breakers on eBay, such as LA Mini Spares, as they have a great reputation and won’t knowingly send out broken parts.

If you’ve changed your Mini central locking receiver, you’ve tidied up the key and put a new battery in, but still get no response from the car when you press buttons, it’s professional time. You’re going to want someone like the Carz Keys in Gloucestershire, Lee is a nice guy, with an insane amount of different key cutting and programming kit. He’s a mobile key maker, which is great if you’ve lost your only working key. If he can’t sort you out, I don’t know what will.

My keys worked for manually unlocking the doors and for starting the car but the remote central locking was dead. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but if it’s a walking stick sort of day simply pressing a button to lock or unlock the car is massive. For example going to Lidl, it’s not far, but I can’t walk there. So I drive there, get out and shop, no bother.

But then you’re back at the car, holding a couple of bags, or a fruit cardboard box because you’ve forgotten the bags again. Without the magic remote I had to put my shopping on the roof, bend down to put the key in my driver’s side door, then quickly open the door and get the key in the ignition to prevent the alarm from going off, then open the boot, pick up the box, before finally shoving everything in the boot and going home. It was a right pain in the arse, and a theft risk leaving the key in the ignition whilst packing shopping into the boot.

Thanks to Lee at The Carz Keys I no longer have to do that utter faff. Apparently there was corrupt data in my cars key memory which meant adding another remote key wasn’t possible, but the solution was what I’d call a cloned fob.

If you are wondering why I hid my key blade, it’s because people can get keys cut from photos these days! So safety first, be careful what photos you share. I obviously am obsessed with Rugby and Minis, and my keys make my hobbies obvious, but I’m not giving you the key blade. 😂

Now I have two fully working sets of keys, it’s a small thing, but it makes a huge difference to someone like me.

If you are in Gloucestershire, and are struggling with car keys, remote fobs, or immobilizer chips, call Lee.