So - I am so pleased with my wife's new R55 that I ordered an R56 for myself. Now I have a silly question - if I put the key for her car on the same keychain as the key for my new car, will I be able to tell them apart? I'll keep them on different chains if I have to, but normally I put car keys on 1 keychain and all the other keys on a second.

 

As far as I can tell, the car reads only the key that's inserted into the docking port.

 

My wife's wrapped a rubber band around one of the keys so she can tell them apart. I've been meaning to get rubber bands in colours to match the MINIs to I can tell them apart. I currently use 2 keychains.

 

I think the question was about the driver telling which is which, not the car. However, my wife had a weird problem where one of the MINIs refused to start, I think my wife had put the wrong key in the slot. It was a bit baffling at the time.

 

I personally would hate to have them both on 1 keychain. I like to keep my keys in my pocket and one key is bad enough.

 

a bit of nail polish to mark one

 

I assume that you are talking about fobs, rather than keys. My understanding is that only the fob encoded for your MINI will work. So, it shouldn't matter if they are both on one chain, if you can deal with the bulk of two fobs together. You would want to mark them so you can tell which goes with which car.

Even if you have Comfort Access fobs that don't need to be inserted in the fob dock, the car should only read the appropriate fob. If you both are in the car with your own Comfort Access fob for that car it will probably see the one from the person who gets in the car first. So, if the passenger is first it may use the settings that person prefers.

 

You are correct - I am talking about the fobs rather than the keys. I hadn't even thought about the comfort access issue; her car does not have it, but I did spec it on mine.

Thanks for all the replies

 

I had a very low-tech way of telling my key fob apart from my wife's: I dropped mine on the ground and now I look for the unique dings in the chrome ring.

Leave it to me to over-engineer a response.

 

Avoid dropping them as it has been reported that it is a pain to replace the 'chrome' (plastic) rings.

Since one will be Comfort Access, that solves the 'confusing the two'
CA Fob's have replacable battery's and a battery compartment.

 

this is really a thread worthy question?

what's next? "Honey....how can I tell the used boxers from the clean ones?"

 

heheheheheh "thread-worthy"

six degrees of separation = Seinfeld

 

It was easy for me, the chrome ring had dropped off of Tristan's key. The key still worked, though was a little loose and could be removed without shutting down.

When I took Tristan in for service, I forgot to mention it and the key came back to me magically whole again. I think they'd replaced the key because it'd lost some of its programming.

 

What I really want is one key which will work in two MINIs. I don't see why it wouldn't work for the circular part (with the buttons), you could introduce 2 MINIs to the same key. The part of the key which stores data might get confused though. The mechanical metal part would be the problem, I'm assuming that's more unique. You could carry one full key and one metal bit.

Carrying 2 of those keys on one key ring is very bulky.