Remote Locking And Unlocking

[seatkid]

Well done - I suspect most "faulty" fobs are a similar story.

[davgree]

Thanks to all who have left comments about door locking - I sorted my prob yesterday.

 

The fault was drivers door wiring loom. One wire had come slightly detached (on the door side) where the loom joins door to body shell. The small red and white wire (on the connection block is numbered No.10) seems to get rubbed when the door is fully opened, even though it is within a flex type sock.

 

Easily repaired, with the loom removed, force the male pin out with pliers, pin has a clap on the other end, simply rejoin detached wire and clamp with pliers, refit and it was working again!

 

Symptoms were - Remote not working properly, LED not flashing, drivers door not locking sometimes, central locking not working on key. All Working now!

[NikpV]

well done - the door wires are a common problem - see 31 and 43 in the faq Edited August 28, 2008 by NikpV

[seatkid]

A follow up to my "refurbished key"

 

After about a month I started to have problems and it deteriorated over another couple of weeks to the extent that it was very hit or miss again.

 

So I decided to look into it again. This time I stripped it down and examined the PCB thoroughly both sides under a magnifying glass, looking for solder breaks etc. Couldnt find any breaks or PCB key problems. (No need for any shims...)

 

What I did find was the contact area on the pcb was had rubbed under the battery contact, rubbing away the tinning and exposing the copper underneath.

see below

 

 

From experience at work, copper does not make a good battery contact. So I retinned the area with a soldering iron - making sure that the tinning was even and not too thick. (I avoided the little square)

 

Voila! Working better than brand new!

 

I am very confident that this is the problem with most fobs but I'll report in another month or so to confirm whether the repair is permanent.

 

MYTH: If you remove the batteries, after a couple of minutes the key will need to be reprogrammed.

 

I had the battery disconnected for well over 10 minutes. The key does not rely on batteries to retain data. I'm not even sure that the key is programmable - the "programming procedure" programs the vehicle's remote locking system to accept the key. (This has security implications if thats the case)

Edited October 17, 2008 by seatkid