If you rent cars often enough, you’ll eventually get one that probably would’ve been better off seeing the rental company’s mechanic before going back out “in the wild.”
It’s usually nothing earth-shattering; just annoying. I remember one time I rented a car in Austin and a couple of days in, I realized I had no windshield wiper fluid. The windshield needed to be cleaned, so I went to wherever, bought a bottle of windshield washer fluid and added it to the car. I kept the empty bottle and the receipt and they reimbursed me for the cost when I brought the car back.
But what if something happens while you’re using the car and whatever goes wrong is something that needs to be fixed, like, now? Hopefully you have some sort of protection, either bought from the agency, or AAA, or coverage from whatever credit card you used. If not, you can cross your fingers you’re in the right place in the right state that offers free roadside assistance for broken-down cars.
Or maybe you can just use a hack that you never knew about.
More and more cars nowadays don’t use a key to get into the car and then start it, but instead use an electronic fob. And if the battery on the fob goes, you’re pretty much out of luck…or so you might think. Happily, a TikToker named Ceith Griffith recently explained a hack to not only open the car door, but get the car started…even if the fob battery is dead.
“If you have a vehicle that has a push button start and your key fob dies, and you can’t get inside your vehicle because the battery is dead in your key fob,” Griffith begins, “I’m going to show you how to get inside your vehicle and also how to start your vehicle with a dead key fob.”
Griffith continues, “On most key fobs, there’ll be a button somewhere along the edges, right there that you push and it will pop a key out of the key fob.” He shows how it looks on his GMC key fob.
He then says, “Every vehicle has them. It doesn’t matter if it’s Ford, Mercedes. It doesn’t matter what kind of vehicle you have, there’ll always be a key inside the key fob.”
He shows that on the underside of the door handle, there is a small hole where the key fits. That will allow a cover on a portion of the door handle to pop off. This reveals the manual lock for inserting the key and opening the door.
Once inside, Griffith says there should be a slot within the center console where the key fob fits. This allows the push button starter to be activated.
Once you’re up and running, you can either contact where you rented the vehicle so they can advise you what to do next.
Here’s Griffith’s full video:
@ceithgriffith
Obviously, this little hack can work with your own car, as well, if you suddenly find yourself with a fob that has a dead battery.
Learn something new every day!
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