Mk8 ST-Line locked out

[ChrisLocalBoy]

Morning all,

 

Had the car since April and loved every minute of it, until this morning!

On my way to work at about 7am, pulled up outside my mates house as he left his golves in there at the weekend, pulled up..... left the engine running, jumped out run the 15yds to his front door and shoved them through, get back to my car...... it's just suddenly decided to lock itself and subsequently me out of it as I'd left the keys inside, by the little storage area under the A/C controls.

 

Now I'll admit this is my first time having a car with a 'push to start button' and am still getting used to not needed to put keys in the ignition........ but I'm also fairly certain the car should just never lock itself when the keys are still inside the ***** car!!!! tried all 4 doors and the boot and as I was I could hear beeping from inside, the same sort of beeping if you open the door whilst the engine is running, or leave your lights on etc........ also, the red seatbelt light was occasionally flashing despite no seat belts being engaged at all?

 

No major issue I thought, I'll just ring the Mrs who can run the spare down to me........ but as any bloke knows, that one time you need your Mrs in an emergency she cannot hear either he mobile or the house phone ringing as she was still fast asleep and I couldn't get hold of her, the mates house I was outside was already miles away at work so in a panic I had to run/walk/half die the best part of 2 miles back to my house leaving the car running to get my spare key and get the Mrs to drive me back in her car........and as you can imagine I was not impressed one bit!!!

 

I've had a browse on these forums and Google and cant see any mention of this issue and cant check my manual until later, I'm also going to try and replicate this when I get home form work tonight because if this is a thing I'd like Ford to explain to me why a car with the keys inside would ever need to lock itself or if its some kind of fault, or am I just being a numbty?

 

Also worth mentioning I've jumped out of the car countless times in the same manner to post letters or swap drivers when I'm being dropped off at the pub etc and this has never happened before.

 

Any ideas?

[Eric Bloodaxe]

Presumably you had disabled the stop start system for the engine to keep running? Never experienced what you describe, but have had the reverse - the car refusing to lock. I realised eventually that when I pulled up to park the engine had stopped due to the start stop, but I had not physically turned it off by pressing the button. A friend has had similar experiences with her Evoque.

Personally I would never get out of my car with the engine running (your insurance won't pay up if someone jumps in and nicks it) and I always keep the key on my person not in the car so I remember where I've put it.

Hope you manage to work out what you did under controlled conditions, but if not it looks like a dealer visit. According to the manual, cars with keyless start will shut down automatically if idling for "an extended period" which it sounds like yours was.

Amazing thing with wives not being there when needed, same happened to me a few years ago. I locked the keys in the boot when visiting my Mum, having already locked the doors. Rang home - no wife. Ended up forking out £50 for a taxi home/back to get spare keys, so lesson learned!😀

 

[ChrisLocalBoy]

44 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Presumably you had disabled the stop start system for the engine to keep running? Never experienced what you describe, but have had the reverse - the car refusing to lock. I realised eventually that when I pulled up to park the engine had stopped due to the start stop, but I had not physically turned it off by pressing the button. A friend has had similar experiences with her Evoque.

Personally I would never get out of my car with the engine running (your insurance won't pay up if someone jumps in and nicks it) and I always keep the key on my person not in the car so I remember where I've put it.

Hope you manage to work out what you did under controlled conditions, but if not it looks like a dealer visit. According to the manual, cars with keyless start will shut down automatically if idling for "an extended period" which it sounds like yours was.

Amazing thing with wives not being there when needed, same happened to me a few years ago. I locked the keys in the boot when visiting my Mum, having already locked the doors. Rang home - no wife. Ended up forking out £50 for a taxi home/back to get spare keys, so lesson learned!😀

 

Hi Eric,

No, I had not disabled the Stop/Start..... I can only assume because I'd only been driving for 3 mins the car hadn't warmed up enough for it to be in operation yet, I've remembered something else since which may be significant, I'd locked the doors from inside when I started to drive off (old habit)....... but this would of unlocked automatically when I got out as it always has, but some issue then caused it to re-lock. I dont know why and if this is indeed the case its a pretty big issue........ the car should never ever lock itself with the key sitting right inside the car.

When I got back to it some 30-40 mins later, as you mentioned the engine had indeed shut itself down but the radio was still running inside.

My mate at work has just come up with a good suggestion..... he asked if I had placed anything on the passenger seat..... his thinking is that the car thought there was someone in that seat and locked the car again, it certainly might explain the flashing seat belt light and beeping tone.

He's got a good point, as I had my bag with my laptop and lunch in etc....... I normally put it in the foot-well..... but I honestly cant remember whether it went on the seat or not this morning but its something else to test.

As for jumping out, I was out of the car for 10-15 seconds max..... that's all it took, I wouldn't even consider turning the engine off and locking it etc..... it'd take me longer to do that than actually get out etc....... but I do appreciate what you are saying.

If I get to the bottom of it I'll put a post up so it doesn't happen to others.

Thanks

Chris

[Bobr]

As an ex copper my advice is switch off the ignition if your going to get out of the car for any reason.   Two reasons; if the engine is running it takes less than  10 /15 seconds for someone to get in and drive off  (and as pointed out above your insurance won't pay out) and secondly if you get out of the car and leave the engine running you are committing an offence.

[Eric Bloodaxe]

39 minutes ago, ChrisLocalBoy said:

 

If I get to the bottom of it I'll put a post up so it doesn't happen to others.

Yes, It'll be most interesting to see the answer! 

Possibly your mate could well be onto something with the laptop though. Don't know if you have keyless entry as well, but either way electronic devices in close proximity can confuse the remote ( they confuse me, but that's another issue😀).

 

 

 

 

 

[Martijn89]

Oof, that really is annoying. Good tip, I will never get out of the car again with the keys in. 

I had it one time with that button which only opens your boot, I grabbed some tools out of it and left the key in it. And you can guess it; I closed the boot with the keys in it. Everything locked. But that really was my bad, not the car's. 🙂

[Tdci-Peter]

On 12/11/2018 at 12:43 PM, ChrisLocalBoy said:

the red seatbelt light was occasionally flashing despite no seat belts being engaged at all?

Does the car auto-lock when moving? Also normally the seatbelt warning will only come on when moving. It sounds a bit like some glitch or gremlim made the car think it was moving above the self-lock speed. The seatbelt warning chime would also sound.

If so, it is certainly worth some investigation. On cars with ABS, speed is from the ABS, so it suggests an intermittent fault in there, or between it and the ECU. I assume it is under warranty, I would suggest that possibility to the dealer.