Question to those of you with keyless start on your Focus

[All that jazz]

How do you stop the car from locking itself when you're working on the exterior? If I'm washing it, for example, it has a really annoying habit of locking itself and winding the mirrors back in just as I'm cleaning them or anywhere near the sensor on the door handles. I've tried various button combination presses with the fob to make it stay unlocked but nothing works. There must be a way of overriding it but there's nothing in the manual about it. Anyone know?

[All that jazz]

AGK?

[AGK]

Replied but realised I can't remember if I done it that way.

I leave it locked and put the key in the garage/house.

Not tried if unlocking it and moving the key away stops it locking if you press the handle...

It can be rather annoying

[All that jazz]

AGK said:

Replied but realised I can't remember if I done it that way.

I leave it locked and put the key in the garage/house.

Not tried if unlocking it and moving the key away stops it locking if you press the handle...

It can be rather annoying

No, the car still locks itself without the key being near it. I tried that already.

[craigjm]

Why not leave the key fob in the car. On any car ive had with keyless entry and start the car remains open with the key inside.

[igiveup]

On my Mrs Fiesta, there is an option in the menu system to not fold mirrors. That's what I do when i'm summoned to wash it.

[Howard-]

Is it locking as you press the button on the door handle, or after you unlock it and a period of inactivity?

If the latter, then if you open the driver's door then close it again, it will stay unlocked.

If the former, well I think the solution is obvious

[AGK]

Howard- said:

Is it locking as you press the button on the door handle, or after you unlock it and a period of inactivity?

If the latter, then if you open the driver's door then close it again, it will stay unlocked.

If the former, well I think the solution is obvious

If you're near it and pressure wash the handle then it locks/unlocks lol.

[yellowjack]

Not sure if it's the same system as my 2012 Mondeo, but with mine, if you click the fob button to unlock the car but don't open a door within a set time, it presumes the button was pressed in error and re-locks the car.

The way I've found to stop it locking itself again is simply to open and close a door. Once you've broken the perimeter 'seal' the car presumes the act of unlocking it was deliberate and the doors will remain unlocked and the mirrors unfolded until such time as you decide to press the 'lock' button on the fob.

If the Focus' system is different, then just disregard all I've said above as irrelevant.

[All that jazz]

I will try the thing with opening the door and closing it again and see if that works. I thought I'd tried that already and it relocked itself after a while but I may be mistaken. As for the suggestion to leave the key inside the car..... not sure if serious.

[Howard-]

My Mondeo behaves in exactly the same way ^

AGK said:

If you're near it and pressure wash the handle then it locks/unlocks lol.

It sounds faulty then, and/or water is getting where it shouldn't and perhaps disturbing the microswitch that activates when the handle is pulled.

I'd advise simply not pressure washing that area!


If you leave the key inside the car, you won't (or shouldn't) be able to lock it.

[yellowjack]

All that jazz said:

I will try the thing with opening the door and closing it again and see if that works. I thought I'd tried that already and it relocked itself after a while but I may be mistaken. As for the suggestion to leave the key inside the car..... not sure if serious.

I tried an experiment the other day to see if it was possible to lock the car with the spare key when the main one was in the car. It was for frosty mornings, so I could consider leaving it to warm up on the drive and not watch it getting driven off without me, while I had a second cuppa. It wouldn't do it. I couldn't lock the car without the key inside either, with the engine running.

But you CAN lock the keys in the car if you only 'pop the boot' and then shut the hatch with the key fob on the boot floor. Don't ask how I managed to do that, but suffice to say it was lucky I was at home with the spare key to hand...

[Howard-]

yellowjack said:

But you CAN lock the keys in the car if you only 'pop the boot' and then shut the hatch with the key fob on the boot floor. Don't ask how I managed to do that, but suffice to say it was lucky I was at home with the spare key to hand...

You shouldn't be able to do that either (if the car is equipped with keyless entry as well as keyless start). If I do that, the boot just pops open again.

[yellowjack]

Howard- said:

yellowjack said:

But you CAN lock the keys in the car if you only 'pop the boot' and then shut the hatch with the key fob on the boot floor. Don't ask how I managed to do that, but suffice to say it was lucky I was at home with the spare key to hand...

You shouldn't be able to do that either (if the car is equipped with keyless entry as well as keyless start). If I do that, the boot just pops open again.

Not keyless entry, just the fob that you can keep in your pocket and start with the "POWER" button. Your reply got me thinking that I might be remembering the incident wrongly. So I just nipped out to try it.

Spare keys IN the car, engine off? Main key locks the doors.
Key fob in car, engine running? Main key fob has no effect whatsoever, preventing you from locking the doors.

So the perimeter integrity 'thing' should prevent you locking your keys into passenger compartment of the car accidentally. But it definitely stops you locking them in there deliberately with the engine running. And with no key in the car, engine running, it refuses to lock too. I repeated the 'keys in the boot' incident, and sure enough as soon as the bootlid closed, the double flash of the hazard warning lights confirmed that the keyfob was indeed now locked in the car. I keep my key in my pocket these days, to avoid the risk of a repeat with no access to the spare...

[AGK]

Howard- said:

It sounds faulty then, and/or water is getting where it shouldn't and perhaps disturbing the microswitch that activates when the handle is pulled.

I'd advise simply not pressure washing that area!


If you leave the key inside the car, you won't (or shouldn't) be able to lock it.

Not sure if the Mondeo is different then as no pulling of the handle is required to unlock, in fact no physical contact at all is required. Simply placing a hand between the handle and the door is enough.

[Ron240]

All that jazz said:

How do you stop the car from locking itself when you're working on the exterior? If I'm washing it, for example, it has a really annoying habit of locking itself and winding the mirrors back in just as I'm cleaning them or anywhere near the sensor on the door handles.

All that jazz said:

No, the car still locks itself without the key being near it. I tried that already.

I have encountered the problem you describe when washing my Focus.
First of all and what has already been stated....if you unlock the car but do not open a door then it will automatically relock itself after a set time....which I think is 1 minute. If you do open a door within this time the car will not automatically relock.

I get round this problem when washing my car by unlocking, making sure I have opened a door then putting the key fob out of sensor range. This way I can come into contact with the door sensors as many times as I want and the car will remain unlocked.
Yes it would also work if the key fob was left inside the car, but I would not be comfortable with doing this because I will walk away from my car sometimes to get something from the house for example, so that's no different to leaving the car unattended with keys in the ignition.

Edited by Ron240 on Saturday 21st January 13:15

[All that jazz]

That's perfect Ron, thanks! I will definitely do that next time I'm working on it. I really hate the keyless entry thing as it doesn't actually do anything better than the good old key system would and in fact makes everything needlessly complicated. Apart from the above issue I also find it incredibly annoying how you can't just insert the key and fire the car up on a cold morning while you work outside de-icing your side window but instead you have to physically get in the seat in order to depress the clutch and press the start button. You can stick your leg in and do it from outside the car but there's two problems with that: 1. with the Disklok still on it's not easy (and nor is it easy to remove the Disklok from outside the car either) and 2. if the fob is in your pocket you are too far away for the car to see it and it says "no key fob detected" when trying to start it so you then have to take it out of your pocket and wave it somewhere near the dashboard. All very irksome. Likewise if you leave a window ajar by accident you have to go through the whole rigmarole of waving the fob near the dashboard while you reach over and press the start button before you can use the electric window button. On an older car you'd just pop the car in the ignition, quick turn, window up, key out, DONE.

/rant