Back in October, I purchased a Timeless Certified V12S from Park Place Aston Martin. Before shipping the car to Minneapolis, I had asked them to program my spare glass key from my V8 Vantage. Upon the delivery of the car, I tried starting it with the original key and it was unprogrammed for starting, but the door locks worked. Assuming a low power battery, I took it to Morries Cadillac who just stopped selling and servicing Astons and asked them to install a new battery, watching the process. The 6 itsy-bitsy screws that held the battery in place were all stripped and the battery was being held together by the case pressure. Anyway with the new battery the car still would not start, and by that time the car went into storage. When I eventually got the paperwork, after several calls of recent services (not easy with Park Place), I saw that replacing the battery had been done at the Timeless Certification process. Fast forward 5 months, I remembered a trick: If you have three keys (I had the reprogrammed and the plastic key as well as the inop key), you insert two good keys, and then the third key and it automatically programs it (and up to 5 extra keys). Took about 15 seconds and it worked. This morning I tried unlocking the car to see if that still worked. It did, however, the pressure of the case (because of the stripped screws) kept the lock and unlock buttons on constantly with the car continually locking and unlocking. I had to move the key a considerable distance to have stop the cycle. That's when I decided to go to Continental Diamond (Golden Valley, MN) who does a lot of watch repair and asked them to fabricate some solution for the stripped screws (assuming they just went a larger size). They worked on it about 20 minutes, no charge and it's back to normal. The reason I'm reporting this, is that these microscopic screws can be abused, and you should be watching the process of a battery change to make sure those 6 screws are not stripped. If you have your own tiny set, the job does not look that hard, but be sure when you pull it apart the buttons side is the side that's down.

 

Thanks for the write-up. I love my Aston, but the company makes us spend way too much time and money on keys. Yea I know modern keys are complicated, but Aston takes it to an absurd level - and to absurd prices