Locked My Keys In The Boot - Long Read

[Stigbew]

I thought I would post my story about locking my keys in the boot for all your entertainment, hopefully a precautionary tale for other new owners and perhaps a 'how to' guide if anyone finds them self in a similar set of circumstances. TL;DR at the bottom.

This occurred last weekend, it was at the end of my first week of really having lived with my e85. I was up in the Scottish borders competing in the National Smallbore Rifle Association Centenary Scottish Meeting. After a week of sub-par shooting, I was looking forward to heading home the next day when I drove into the field car park on Friday morning. Was a nice enough morning so drove there with the roof down, got out of the car and put the roof up with the keys (gap-Tech module). This was my first mistake as it locks the car in the process which I wasn’t used to. Then opened the boot with the key and fumbled around in a boot full of shooting kit to find a few bits, grab them and close the boot. Go to lock the car, no keys. Oh sh** the car is fully locked, and I dropped my keys into the boot so I could use both hands to rummage.

So, I do what all people do in this situation, call my dad, who is 300 miles away for reference. We discuss driving the spare key up but wouldn’t be until tomorrow, discuss cost of this compared to recorded before 1pm postage but again not until tomorrow. So, I start ringing around locksmiths, some don’t pick up, others don’t do cars, I end up calling a national auto locksmithing number (another mistake) and they say they will contact their local guy and call back with an ETA and quote. They call back and say it will be 2 hours, £60 deposit now to secure the engineer and another £100 to the engineer. I agree not quite sure what else to do at this point.

Guy gives me a call 1h30m later asking exactly where I am, and I give him instructions over the phone. When he turns up, he tells me he was in the other car park and knew he was supposed to be working on a BMW Z-something so when he saw a Z3 he just cracked on trying to get the boot open. The owner of the Z3 was apparently quite surprised to find a locksmith braking into his boot but the locksmith managed to explain his mistake. (If any of you were the Z3 owner trying to enjoy a day out at Thirlestane castle then I apologise).

He starts with his tools on the boot lock but after about 45 mins switches to trying the driver’s door, after another short while he gets into the driver’s door which promptly sets off the car alarm, putting off many people who were shooting not 50m away. He then manages to lockpick the ignition and can get power to do stuff like roll the windows up and down, but the boot release button still isn’t working. He goes back to trying to pick the boot lock but breaks his pick in the process and tells my I’m sh** out of luck. I’ve been on the forum and internet at this point doing my research and find a possible fix which requires grounding the correct wire from the general module, so he has a go at that but no luck. My final suggestion was to remove the bumper and I had read you could access the boot through the air vents on either side.

Now my cars park distance control wasn’t working when I purchased it so have had the bumper off more times than I care to mention trying to diagnose and fix the problem so with a couple of tools I could scrounge from peoples rifle toolkits I had the bumper off in 5 minutes and sure enough the two air vents pop right out giving you access to the boot from behind the carpet in the corners. So we pushed the carpet out the way and started feeling around in the boot, prodding with a magnet on a stick the locksmith had, pulling small items out through the holes to give us more space to work and after about 45 minutes I finally grab a hold of the holy grail like some sort of warped grabber carnival game. Success!

The locksmith explained he would have given me money off had I called him directly but because he was under contract by the national company, he had to charge me full whack. I was a bit pissed but seeing as I was paying for 3 hours of his time rather than his actual success I paid up and said that would be the motivation I need to always triple check I have my keys in my hand before ever closing the boot again.

I will now accept all comments calling me an absolute plonker.

TL;DR Locked my keys in the boot 300 miles away from the spare set. Called locksmith, ended up removing the bumper and fishing them out myself.

[Jembo]

This happened at I think the national meet last year - srhutch performed the surgical bumper removal technique to a huge applause when he grabbed the key

maybe if there’s an emergency next time, worth posting if anyone has any emergency suggestions for xyz... u never know

Glad ur now sorted, things like this easily happen

[Any1else]

At the risk of being shot down (pardon the pun) but if he managed to get into the car, shouldn’t the boot release have worked if you pressed it?

PS - read it all cos I am glad there are other people out there like me

[ZedConvert]

Stigbew, This is a thing of nightmares for me... it's not happened yet, but I'm ultra paranoid whenever routing through my boot with keys in hand, so easily done!

Thanks for the practical advice, very handy.

[Stigbew]

At the risk of being shot down (pardon the pun) but if he managed to get into the car, shouldn’t the boot release have worked if you pressed it?

PS - read it all cos I am glad there are other people out there like me

The reason the boot release doesn’t work is so if you park it with the roof down someone can’t lean in and pop the boot. So the car has to be centrally unlocked for the boot release to work.

[Any1else]

At the risk of being shot down (pardon the pun) but if he managed to get into the car, shouldn’t the boot release have worked if you pressed it?

PS - read it all cos I am glad there are other people out there like me

The reason the boot release doesn’t work is so if you park it with the roof down someone can’t lean in and pop the boot. So the car has to be centrally unlocked for the boot release to work.

Doh, of course.

[brillomaster]

Only having the one key, and aware that theres no external release on the boot, I'm quite cautious... I literally hold the key in the air in one hand, and tell myself out loud 'I'm holding the key' as I close the boot with the other hand.

[G600]

Might save someone the trouble in the future, if you have Carly you can code the car so that you can't open the boot without unlocking the car first, so even if you shut they keys in the boot you can still open the door and use the boot release button.

[Stigbew]

Might save someone the trouble in the future, if you have Carly you can code the car so that you can't open the boot without unlocking the car first, so even if you shut they keys in the boot you can still open the door and use the boot release button.

Very good suggestion, I will look into this. Makes perfect sense not sure why it wasn’t like that out of the factory.

[enuff_zed]

Way back in the mists of time, when I got my first car (Mk1 Escort 1100L), my old man bought me a magnetic box that fitted up under the car with a spare key in it. It stuck there, no problem, for 3 years.
Now i know modern keys are quite expensive bits of kit, so a bit risky hoping they'll stay stuck in place, but would it be possible to get a basic one cut, just enough to access the boot or door, and secrete it under the car somewhere?

[Stigbew]

Way back in the mists of time, when I got my first car (Mk1 Escort 1100L), my old man bought me a magnetic box that fitted up under the car with a spare key in it. It stuck there, no problem, for 3 years.
Now i know modern keys are quite expensive bits of kit, so a bit risky hoping they'll stay stuck in place, but would it be possible to get a basic one cut, just enough to access the boot or door, and secrete it under the car somewhere?

I’ve read in a couple of places about the wallet key that this car apparently came with. Same idea but this was just a plastic key to stick in your wallet for this very situation. Unfortunately the one for my car has gone walkabouts at some point in the last 15 years

[Huzee4]

Been there done that, locked my one and only key in the boot of my first Zed after a particularly griefy nightshift and spent hours trying to get in whilst half asleep. Finally gave in and contacted a locksmith who picked the boot lock in seconds with a very long and micro thin key charging me £75. He explained the lock picking keys are uber expensive and have a very limited lifespan.

[Mr Tidy]

What a pain OP - glad you got it sorted though.

I did just that with my E46 Compact, but thankfully I was at home and so was the spare key!

So when when I got my current Z4 I was disappointed to only get one key. I got a spare cut and coded by DLV, and he also deleted the missing keys from the EWS.

[firebobby]

This happened at I think the national meet last year - srhutch performed the surgical bumper removal technique to a huge applause when he grabbed the key

maybe if there’s an emergency next time, worth posting if anyone has any emergency suggestions for xyz... u never know

Glad ur now sorted, things like this easily happen

It was Lynchy who did the deed at Zedfest
We gave support