Well, THAT was interesting!

Came out of the gym last night all sweaty and tired, tried to put the key in the ignition of my 2009 Jetta and it wouldn't go in.

Flip the key around, NFG. What? Got a ride home 15 miles away, got the extra set of keys; same thing. I called my insurance company and will have it towed this morning as no one will do an "unattended pickup". My Googlefu shows it's not an uncommon problem. A little bit of spring loaded plastic falls down into the key slot blocking the key's entry. Sometimes you can get the obstruction out of the way and make it home, but it will probably happen again.

Car just ticked over 100,000 trouble free miles, guess worse things could have happened.

Dan

I had forgotten about it until I read this, our '09 did the same thing at around 60K miles. I dug around inside the key slot with a bobby pin until the key fit. That worked for a day or two until I had to do it again. The second time I attempted to drag anything out of the key slot that might be in there with the same bobby pin. I couldn't tell if anything actually came out, but fiddled with it until the key went in again. I kept a bobby pin in the console from then on, but that second time "fixed" it. I never had another problem with the key, car was totaled by a dumb as texter, at a bit over 101K miles.

I thought you were going to say it turned out to be someone else's car. Hehe

TDI? My parents are getting a nice check from VW for their 2010. All it's little issues are going away.

I'm having a similar issue with my TDi. I'll be glad when that hunk of worthless E36 M3 is gone.

dculberson wrote: I thought you were going to say it turned out to be someone else's car. Hehe

This actually happened to my Aunt once. She had actually got into the car before realizing it was full of someone else's stuff.

Really makes you wonder how many cars your keys fit...

I was expecting a failed thievery attempt.

The garage got the key in, a replacement tumbler from a Stealership will be here in 7 - 10 days. In the mean time, the key in there stays there and the second set will be used to lock and unlock the car. We don't go anywhere sketchy and I removed everything from the key and put black tape over the shiny bit on the end. Don't want to get stuck away from home again....

The garage can do the swap and reconfigure the tumbler to accept my old keys. $250.

100,000 miles of just putting gas in it? Too easy.

Crackers wrote:

dculberson wrote: I thought you were going to say it turned out to be someone else's car. Hehe

This actually happened to my Aunt once. She had actually got into the car before realizing it was full of someone else's stuff. Really makes you wonder how many cars your keys fit...

Typical car key is what, 8 pins with 10 positions each? That's 10^8 (100 million) unique keys. Though given a few years of wear it's probably more like 5 positions (100,000) or less. I know two people off the top of my head who have accidentally driven off in the wrong car, both were high production Chrysler products.

BrokenYugo wrote: Though given a few years of wear it's probably more like 5 positions (100,000) or less.

On newer cars the locks might stay that good, like the OP's, but on plenty of older cars (at least into the 90's) it's not uncommon to be able to open a shocking percentage of certain manufacturers' cars with just a handful of the right keys.

I had that happen on my E36 towards the end of its life. Stopped to get coffee and cigs on the way to work one morning and couldn't get my keys back in the ignition. It was rather baffling to my half asleep, uncaffeinated brain. It's apparently a semi common problem, some little spring loaded dingle on the tumbler gets stuck and has to be manually reset. I just left the steering column halfway taken apart from then on for easy access, as it was a recurring problem. I probably looked super sketchy going after my ignition with a screwdriver in the Sheetz parking lot after work that night lol.

That happened to my gti.

I remember a story growing up on LI of a body shop painting a car only to realize it was the wrong car. Keys from one brand actually worked in another brand. Was late 70s early 80s IIRC.

Crackers wrote:

dculberson wrote: I thought you were going to say it turned out to be someone else's car. Hehe

This actually happened to my Aunt once. She had actually got into the car before realizing it was full of someone else's stuff. Really makes you wonder how many cars your keys fit...

On the old 80's Toyota there were only 22 keys that they made. Yota had to get involved really quick and start doing things differently because stuff was getting stolen so easily. There's a Celica forum member that has the total set of keys for our celica's that also work on the hilux. When someone loses a key he just mails you the set, you make a copy and mail the originals back to him.

Trackmouse wrote:

Crackers wrote:

dculberson wrote: I thought you were going to say it turned out to be someone else's car. Hehe

This actually happened to my Aunt once. She had actually got into the car before realizing it was full of someone else's stuff. Really makes you wonder how many cars your keys fit...

On the old 80's Toyota there were only 22 keys that they made. Yota had to get involved really quick and start doing things differently because stuff was getting stolen so easily. There's a Celica forum member that has the total set of keys for our celica's that also work on the hilux. When someone loses a key he just mails you the set, you make a copy and mail the originals back to him.

It's not just keys. My Nissan Altima had an aftermarket immobiliser, and it had a rolling code. One day I locked the car at church and the girl's car parked next to me also locked. That day I could lock and unlock her car in addition to my own with my key fob, but she couldn't do the same to mine with her fob even though she could unlock her own car of course.. The next time we parked nearby it didn't happen anymore.

The fob on my mom's 99 Taurus would set off other cars alarms. It was fun working Christmas time at the mall. Get off work and hit the panic button to find the car, and 2 or 3 would go off.

Twice my dad and I had interchangeable keys. The key for my Malibu worked in his Monza, and the keys for my B2200 worked in his 626. Both worked the other way as well. The ignition switch (not tumbler) went bad in our Jetta. I was surprised how cheap it was to repair. They only charged us a half hour labour.