Alfa Romeo Mito key replacement – A case study
Another challenge!
At Car Keys Solutions we frequently find ourselves challenged by situations that even main dealerships have no idea how to deal with. And that means we often have to come up with our own solutions to vehicle key problems.
Here’s one such situation: we recently had to work on an Alfa Romeo MITO when the owner had lost the only key they had.
A quick reminder
But before we tell you more, once again we really do have to emphasize the importance of having a second, spare key for your vehicle.
It’s a small investment to make – both in time and money – which would reap dividends should you lose your original key.
That’s because it’s so much easier to create a duplicate key than to create and program another original – and, very often, reprogram or even replace parts of your vehicle’s internal security system.
The problem
And this was the case when we investigated the Alfa Romeo Mito: this particular vehicle had a factory-installed alarm system which, without a key to deactivate it, switches a part of the car’s security system called the body control module (or BCM) into lockdown mode.
And once that happens, replacing an Alfa Romeo Mito key is impossible because even an Alfa dealership can’t delete old key codes from the BCM memory.
The dealership solution
The Alfa dealership we spoke to told us the only way to sort this situation out was to replace the whole BCM (in itself a complicated and expensive job) and then reprogram it to communicate with all the other security modules in the car. Once that was done we could create and program a new set of keys.
The big problem, though, was that this was during a Covid lockdown, meaning the process of ordering and receiving a replacement BCM would have taken weeks longer than it would have done otherwise.
All in all, this looked to the Alfa owner like it was turning out to be a very expensive and very inconvenient solution to the loss of the only key they had.
And it was starting to look that way to us, too …
Our solution
But where there’s a will, there’s a way: rather than accept defeat and put in an order for a replacement BCM, our Car Keys Solutions technicians put their heads together and developed a piece of software that meant they could override the whole factory-installed alarm system – which had originally deactivated the BCM – so they could program new keys without the need for all that extra work. And expense. And delay.
Today we can safely say that to our knowledge we’re the only company with the ability to program keys for the Alfa Romeo MITO without the need to replace its body control module.
What’s more, if you ever find yourself in the same situation you don’t even need to bring your Alfa to our premises – we can come to you wherever you are in London and the Home Counties.
But if you do want to bring your Alfa to our workshop at 142-144 East End Road, East Finchley, N2 0RZ, ninety-nine times out of a hundred we can have you driving back home that very same day.
And finally
Once again, having a spare car key duplicated from an original can save you a great deal of trouble and expense. It’s a simple process, takes very little time and we can make a spare key for all vehicle makes and models.
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