Just an FYI that if you, like me, loose that one car key for your favorite kitty and do not want to deal with having your car towed to the dealerships here in San Diego County, call the Key Crew at 3401 Adams Ave. They are the only ones in San Diego County that come and can reprogram keys and cut new ones for you. Saves you a lot of time and hassle. They also offer the flip key design that the XJ's use for the XK series which is much nicer than the darn separate alarm fob.


I just had a new key cut for my XKR. They came to my house and 20 minutes later, I was driving again. Pretty certain after searching my entire home for my key the past few weeks, now that I have a new one, I will find the lost key in the next few hours

 

That's good but how did they know what pattern to cut your key to?

 

What year is your car? It took a qualified locksmith, with all the interface devices well over an hour to cut and program two keys for my '03. He had to repeat the procedure more than once per key before the programming took. I was stunned at the ridiculousness of the complexity. He said it isn't the worst he's seen. The OEM's are slowly trapping us into being forced to pay them hundreds of dollars just for a key.

 

I had a valet key that I had previously purchased for the car (which was cut but could not be programmed to my car by Jag Carlsbad. Did everything but start the car) that they used, but they can do it without a key as they do have the equipment needed. BTW, they get called by Jag dealerships to do this when they run into issues. I purchased two blanks off Ebay from keylessremotes (189000+ feedback) for $22 and they cut them in their truck at my house and voila....back in business.

 

I have a 2005 XKR convertible and a 2006 Super 8 Portfolio and this was for my XKR. AS you have probably found as well, even finding a locksmith to cut the keys is like finding the Holy Grail. Using Ebay to purchase the blanks and using key crew, I spent less than half of what both SD European and Jag Carlsbad quoted me....and I have my dealer's license and get the wholesale prices from them. Just thought I would share my experience on this board because the posts on here have saved me thousands on repairs and best practices on what to do with my kittys.

BTW....ghost lights in the doors, especially the newest ones which have the Jaguar leper in white LED and 'Jaguar' in red.....look really, really good at night.