2000 Ford Contour
Key Replacement - Save vs Dealer in San Diego

2000 Ford Contour Transponder Key Replacement - Fast, Affordable & Professional

Out in Fernbrook, a woman called me on a weekday morning. She had a 2000 Ford Contour that had been sitting in her driveway for a few days after her only key stopped starting the car. The key would turn, the dash would light up, but the engine would crank and die almost immediately. She thought something had gone wrong mechanically.

I asked her one question: had she had any key work done recently, or did the car sit for a long time? She said it had been sitting. That told me most of what I needed to know.

When I got to Fernbrook, I looked at the key she handed me. The blade was the right one for the car, cut correctly. The issue was the transponder chip inside the head. On these older Ford setups, a key that reads as unknown to the immobilizer will let the engine crank but kills it within a couple of seconds. That's the system working as designed. It's not a mechanical failure, it's the car doing its job and rejecting a key it doesn't recognize anymore.

I programmed a replacement key on site, in her driveway, without touching a dealer's service lane. She watched the whole thing take less time than she expected.

She had called the dealer the day before. They told her it would be a few days before they could even look at it, and the key would need to be ordered. She skipped all of that and was driving the same morning.

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