have you tried AA or RAC As they usually have tricks and no doubt they come up against this problem often.
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Opening Car When The Battery Is Dead
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Do you have a tow bar? In that case you might have a 12v line directly to the battery. If you supply 12v here you should be able to open de door using the key. But only if they’ve wired this constant 12v line. You
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I've just ran into this problem with my Insignia and found a solution, registered on this forum because it was the first google result so I wanted to let others know that it can be solved without breaking any windows
So my Insignia was in the service for quite a long time due to some big issues with the engine, in the meantime I got myself another car which became my daily driver and I haven't driven the Insignia after I got it back for quite some time. Naturally, the battery being old, it died in this time. It is very weird that the key does not work to unlock the car in this scenario, but hey, this is the smallest of the issues with this car...
I got in touch with a friend who is an auto electrician and he explained the solution to me. You need a "donor" car for electricity and a set of jumper cables.
First you need to remove the plastic cover under the left front headlight (the one that covers the spot where the foglights would fit in).
Over there you'll find a black relay box that you can remove through the opening. Remove it's cover and you will see three relays, like in this picture:
Remove the one over the red socket (left one in the picture):
Find a metal pin or a thick cable to insert into socket no. 2:
Connect the jumper cables to the donor car, the negative to the chassis of the Insignia and the positive to the pin that goes into the relay:
Make sure the metallic surface you connect the negative jumper cable to is relatively clean, as the underside will be dirty/rusty so the contact will not be proper.
Once this is done you should be able to insert the key into the driver's side door and unlock it.
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