MOD: Car key improvement

My car key had been an sad sight for a long time. The rubber had deteriorated and I had not been able to keep the key on a ring for months. I got tired of quick fixes with super glue and decided to build something out of Lego.

The first step was easy, get rid of that rotten rubber.

I was now left with the bare key and the little computer chip that talks to the car, making sure it's the right thing that turns the ignition. After this I tried a few solutions but nothing really worked. I realized that the big black part could fit inside a 1 x 4 brick if it's hollowed out. So I drew the key contours on paper and built a little stack of bricks that covered it.

I then rebuilt the stack with generous amounts of super glue between the bricks.

I marked out where the key was to protrude from the bricks and took out the drill.

Easy material to work with!

I begun hollow it out with knifes, but it was slow progress and hard work. So I took out the Dremel with an rotating aggressive file. That was noisy but fast!

Did not take me that long until the key fit snugly inside. I had to narrow down the walls of the bricks some, since the key was a bit thick..

Here you see the opening with the key inside. The little black square to the right is the chip.

The next step was to put a little something on the end to hang the key. Drilled two holes and bent a thick piece of metal wire to fit.

I hammered the ends down, amazing what abuse the plate could take! I was sure to ruin this one but it stood up fine.

Liberal amounts of epoxy resin was smeared all around inside, the key put back in and then topped it up with more resin. Attached the plate and let it set over night.

The next day I cleaned up some squeeze outs and was pleased with the outcome.

Oh, right! Warning: This blog post might be offensive to those who feel even the destruction of bricks worth $0.192 is bad. ;) MOD in this case stands for "My Own Destruction".