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?

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AGK?

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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.

[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.

[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