1998 Lincoln Town Car
Key Replacement - Save vs Dealer in Ventura County

1998 Lincoln Town Car Transponder Key Replacement - Fast, Affordable & Professional

Got a call from a guy along the Ojai Trolley route who had a 1998 Lincoln Town Car sitting in his driveway, dead to him. He said it cranked fine but cut out after two seconds every time. Classic PATS rejection. The THEFT indicator on his dash was flashing like a strobe.

He told me he'd had a spare key made at a hardware store a few weeks back. Plain metal cut, no chip. He'd been using his original key the whole time, but that morning he grabbed the wrong one off the hook. After a few failed starts with the chipless copy, the car wouldn't take the original key either.

That's a known quirk with PATS 1. Repeated attempts with an unrecognized key can put the module into a lockout cycle. The PCM sees too many bad reads and just shuts down the fuel injector pulse. You have to wait it out or reset through the procedure.

I pulled up, confirmed the THEFT light pattern, and ran a PATS relearn with my diagnostic tool through the OBD-II port. Registered his original H72-PT, verified the 4C transponder response, and cut him a proper spare with a programmed chip right there on the hood.

Whole thing took about twenty minutes. He said he almost had it towed to the Lincoln dealer in Thousand Oaks. That would have been a long, expensive day for a problem that started with a blank key off a rack at the hardware store.

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