One of our main services here at vsr is supplying and programming first keys and spare keys. We all loose things time to time and unfortunately its sometimes our car or van keys.
A car key is much different to a house key, this is because a house key turns a mechanical lock to unlock the door. Most vehicle keys have that same principle for the steering lock of your car however they require a transponder chip inside the key to start the vehicle. We can cut the blade copying your first key or if you have lost all of your keys we can pick and decode the door lock to find the biting we need to cut you a new blade.
There are many different types of transponder chips in vehicle keys, all of which need to be programmed to your vehicle to start the engine. This programming is carried out with specialist or dealer tools.
Many car keys also have buttons to lock and unlock the car, these are often programmed in by ourselves when we programme the chip to your car, however sometimes there is a manual procedure we have to follow to programme the buttons in separate. This is where some people get confused, they buy a key online and find a video on how to programme the 'key' but really they will only be able to programme the buttons and the key won't start the vehicle. As mentioned before this is because the transponder chip inside of the key needs to be programmed with specialist or dealer machines.
When coding a key we need to go though the security of the vehicles computer system, this can be easier or harder depending on the vehicle make, model and year. One thing that is certain is it's almost always easier to programme a spare key that the first key, this is because the spare key can let us pass the security much easier. This makes sense because the car sees we must be the rightful owners as we already have a key present.
The reason we are telling you this is because if you don't have a spare key it can get costly if you loose it, of course like anything this varies on the make, model and year of your vehicle (older not always cheaper). This isn't to say all spare keys are easy and cheap - but generally speaking all keys lost is worse than having a key present. Some vehicles allow us to add a first key though the on board diagnostic port on the vehicle, this is the best case scenario. However due to security reasons many vehicles don't allow this, in these cases we may need to remove various modules from different areas of the car to go direct to the chip on the circuit board, we do this to obtain the information we need to programme the key, security codes etc.
We also offer a break in service, this is a damage free service in which we obtain access to your vehicle by either picking the door lock or using an airbag to slightly open the door so we can get access to the inside handle. This service is common with customers locking keys inside the car.