snorkie
Member Since: 18 Feb 2011
Location: pretoria
Posts: 18

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Hi
Over the span of six weeks, I twice had the disturbing occurrence that my key fob got stuck in the slot/socket with no way to get it out!
First occurrence was on a Sunday morning when I wanted to start my car (MY20110) in the garage. I inserted the fob and pressed the Start button - no starting, no dash indications. Called LR Assist who jump started the car and everything worked. At that point in time I had a back problem and didn't pursue the matter further.
Last Friday I stopped at the local hardware store and pressed Stop to switch the engine off - it stopped, but when I prodded the fob to extract it, it wouldn't come out! No matter how many prods and pulls, it wouldn't budge!
Now you sit there with a stuck fob and no way to lock the car from the outside! Luckily I could unlock the driver's door from inside and got out.
While waiting for LR Assist, I experimented by inserting the Garmin's power plug into the permanent 12V socket between the seats and saw the LED glowing, indicating to me that the battery was somehow OK.
Opened the bonnet and removed the battery cover, grabbed the positive clamp and it was moving! Got my 10mm spanner out, tightened the nut and everything came back to normal - dash lights on and fob could be popped out!
To my mind it is a design shortcoming not to have some method of extracting the fob in case of a flat battery or lose connection. I'm thinking of the pinhole on the DVD drive in a personal computer, where one can insert a pin to pop the disk out.
Or is there an alternative method of getting the fob out? And has anybody had the same experience?
(Incidentally, a week or so ago, a lady got stuck in her Discovery in heavy traffic, when the car went into "system shutdown" A window had to be broken, to get her out and for the assistants to get the gar running again).
Seems as if LR is going too much overboard to make its vehicles safe, but at the same time causing the drivers unnecessary inconvenience.
Regards Snorkie
Pretoria
South Africa
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28th Oct 2014 6:10 am |
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