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1999 Pontiac Bonneville VATS key mystery

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Old 10-17-2022, 10:16 PM
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Default 1999 Pontiac Bonneville VATS key mystery

Hello everyone. This is my first post in this forum. I just purchased a 1999 Pontiac Bonneville, I was given only 1 key and one trunk key and I am very concerned about losing my VATS key, so I looked online in ebay and Amazon and before I can purchase an uncut VATS key I need to look up the resistor value of my key. Here is my first problem, my key won't give any reading using a multimeter set to 20k, The strips of metal that I am supposed to touch with my multimeter leads are black, not metal color like I've read on instructions. I cleaned both contacts with a q tip and alcohol, to no avail, they are not dirty, they look like they have some black substance on the contacts, but it is something very well done, does not look like painted. I contacted the VATS seller on ebay and he tells me that my car may have the bypass done and that could be a key with no resistance but to me it doesn't make much sense. My second issue is that this morning I went to Walmart and had a regular (no VATS) duplicate cut, but it won't turn the lock cylinder. I was supposing that a regular, no VATS key would turn the cylinder but won't work but this one won't move cylinder not even 1mm. My question is, should a regular key rotate the lock cylinder or not? Was that key from Walmart cut badly?

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Old 10-18-2022, 12:31 PM
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I just found that the car had a VATS bypass installed, that'* the reason why key had no resistance reading,
Old 10-18-2022, 11:19 PM
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Sounds good.
Old 10-20-2022, 10:33 PM
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Glad you got that figured out.

To answer your other question: If the new key is the proper blank and cut correctly, it should turn the ignition switch with or without the resistor.
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