Do not touch Willie. Good advice!

[wolfie]

Do you live in a low enough crime area that you could leave a key (no keychain, unobtrusive) in the ignition and then lock and unlock the car with a spare? Your insurance company would probably write you off if it got stolen, but that pounding in thing sounds dicey...

Does your car have an immobilizer (ignition switch "talks" to a transponder chip in the head of the key, and you have to get the car programmed to accept the new key)? If so, get the "hammered and left in" key cut on an ordinary (no transponder chip) blank, and rig a hook to hang your existing (with transponder) key right beside the ignition. Thief can turn the hammered-in key all he likes, but the engine won't start unless your existing key is there and "gives the password" properly.

[Merriweather]

. That and the gas gauge is off, when it says I'm at a quarter tank I'm on empty.)

Had a vehicle, years & years ago, that had the fuel guage break/die whatever, it didn't work

Couldn't afford to get it fixed, so I took a small pad, and put it on the visor with a clothespin. I worked out how many miles I could expect to get on a tank of gas (luckily, I had kept track of the mpg it was getting recently). Then when I filled up the tank, I would look at the odometer, add 3/4 of how far I could go on a tank, and write the number in big letters on the pad on the visor - so I knew everytime I got into the car, to check how far before I'd be at a quarter tank, and I always gassed it up at a quarter tank then, just to be safe. Low tech solutions can work, I never ran out of gas But I was ever so glad to get rid of that thing.

[dragon_wings]

Ah, but my odometer also doesn't work. The car's a pos but I love it.

[Merriweather]

Ah, but my odometer also doesn't work. The car's a pos but I love it.

Now that would make things more difficult

[dragon_wings]

Now that would make things more difficult

Indeed. :P It has it's issues but I'll drive it until it dies. Plus I'm so nervous about driving a smaller car. I'm so used to my tank of a car that adapting to a smaller car would be an adventure.

[JoeGould1111]

Ha, I used to have a Ford Focus, and I kept a hammer in the drink holder so I could start it.

One time, I took it into a mechanic to have something done (can't remember what now), and they called me up saying they couldn't start it. I went over, climbed in, got the hammer, gave the ignition a nice quick TAP, and car started right up.

Walked over to them, and they were "OMG, HOW DID YOU GET IT STARTED?". My answer, "that's what the hammer is for."

[TheCheerfulTreeRat]

From a Readers Digest many moons ago.
At a petrol station a driver couldn't re-start his vehicle. Suspecting, from the completely dead response, a dodgy connection on the starter he looked for something to tap it with. Finding nothing but his child's squeaky toy hammer he raised the bonnet (hood) of his rather decrepit car and tapped the leads where they were bolted to the starter. The car started on the first turn of the key.
As he closed the lid on the engine he noticed that a side light was out, suspecting another dodgy connection he tapped it and the light came on.

The garage owner, who'd been watching all this, said "I'm not interested in the car, but how much do you want for the hammer?"

[Argabarga]

My older Taurus had a worn-out ignition cylinder that I discovered by accident that you could pull the key out of while driving and the car would keep running, it wasn't until you turned the cylinder to the "off" position that it would shut off the engine.

And, unless you purposely turned it back to the "accessory" position, it wouldn't engage on the safety lock, so the next time you got in the car, you could just turn the cylinder all by itself, with no key in it, and the car would start right up.

I kinda liked it that way, saved me from having to dig my keys out of my pockets.

Then, last year, whatever breakage inside that caused it to work without the key suddenly broke some more, and now it not only needed the key, but a WHOLE LOT of force to turn it to start it, to the point that I could feel the key starting to bend a bit whenever I turned on it. At that point, I got a new ignition cylinder and key and threw the old one out.

Near as I can estimate, it was good for about 200,000 starts