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240 Key for Impounded Vehicle

+1 Mobile locksmith, they come out with a file and a blank in a vise grip and have you a working key way faster than you would expect. If you just need to get the car onto a trailer, pop the trans linkage off and put in neutral, pop the u joint off the steering rack and you can turn wheels as needed by hand/foot.
 
+1 Mobile locksmith, they come out with a file and a blank in a vise grip and have you a working key way faster than you would expect. If you just need to get the car onto a trailer, pop the trans linkage off and put in neutral, pop the u joint off the steering rack and you can turn wheels as needed by hand/foot.

I didn?t think 240?s had the shifter interlocked with the ignition.
 
I didn?t think 240?s had the shifter interlocked with the ignition.

Touche, if you coat hanger the door no need to pop the linkage.
That said, no getting the car on a trailer with a locked steering wheel, hence the u joint popping.
 
Why would shiftless cars have a shift lock? Seems redundant and worth disabling. That solenoid has screwed up on every high mileage auto my friends have had.
 
Why would shiftless cars have a shift lock? Seems redundant and worth disabling. That solenoid has screwed up on every high mileage auto my friends have had.

Because of people like me. I left my 240 in drive at the post office on a gentle slope once. It didn?t roll right away but once I was through inside, it wasn?t where I left it. The drivers rear door was up against a Honda CRV?s right front corner. Luckily I had accident forgiveness so my rates didn?t go up, but the gouge in the left rear door is still there.
 
Why would shiftless cars have a shift lock?

Because of sudden acceleration, due to "the gas pedal is mistaken for the brakes. When this happens, the driver may push the gas pedal down even harder because he firmly believes he is using the brakes."

Shift lock requires a foot on the brake pedal to shift out of park.

OEMs placed the gas and brake pedals closer together years ago; I've done this several times on Volvos, and never had this issue with older full sized vehicles.

The Audi 5000 Intended Unintended Acceleration 1986 "Sudden acceleration" accidents occurred when the transmission was shifted out of "park." The driver always insisted he was standing on the brake, but after the crash the brakes always worked perfectly. A disproportionate number of accidents involved drivers new to the vehicle. When an idiot-proof shift was installed so that a driver could not shift out of park if his foot was on the accelerator, reports of sudden acceleration plummeted."
 
Thanks for the info. I know why they added that stuff to the cars. Hard to have a sarcastic inflection when conversing via written words. Many US drivers are shiftless and lazy making them not pay attention to what pedal they are pressing.

If you want to check out pedals that are close together. Check out a car like a AH Sprite or MG Midget. I have small feet and it's still very easy to hit two pedals in those cars.
 
...easy to hit two pedals in those cars.

When a person's leg responses were trained on wider spaced pedals, sudden acceleration accidents could have been predicted.

I wear 4E wide footwear, and had my right foot on both pedals when it first happened while accelerating, instead of stopping, at an intersection with a 18 wheeler passing by at some 30 mph. I stopped, but with higher engine RPMs. After that wake-up call, I know what to do.
 
I popped out the glovebox, door and trunk key on mine. Brought to the locksmiths. Glovebox was a generic lock, trunk and drivers were original but different to eachother but the drivers door matched the ignition ;)

The blanks they'll need for ignition are ilco x140 vl8, for trunkilco x51aa2
 
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