2000 Mitsubishi Galant
Key Replacement - Save vs Dealer in San Diego

2000 Mitsubishi Galant Transponder Key Replacement - Fast, Affordable & Professional

I was parked off Seacoast Drive in Downtown IB on a Tuesday afternoon when I got the call. A Galant owner had snapped his only key off in the door lock. The blade was gone, stuck inside, and he was standing next to the car with the bow still in his hand.

First thing I did was extract what was left of the blade from the lock. That part takes patience, not brute force. Once the lock was clear, I decoded it to get the correct key cut, then cut a new blade to match.

From there I connected to the OBD port, accessed the immobilizer, and went through the PIN retrieval and key registration process. The chip in the new key had to be recognized by the system before the car would do anything more than crank. That step is where a lot of general locksmiths stop short on these older Mitsubishis because the procedure is less familiar than what you see on Toyotas and Hondas every day.

When the registration finished, I did three consecutive start cycles and let the engine run between each one. Not a quick turn and off. Full starts, idle, shutdown, wait, repeat. That sequence tells me the immobilizer isn't throwing a delayed fault and the key isn't dropping out mid-session.

He watched the whole thing from about ten feet away, hands in his pockets, not saying much. When I handed him the key he just said he figured it would be a whole week without the car. It was about forty minutes from my arrival to him driving away.

The dealer would have needed the car towed in, an appointment, and probably a couple of days minimum. That's just the reality of how dealers handle a single older vehicle in a queue.

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