Cheap and easy fix for key fob

[rick16706]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this. Also, I tried looking through what has already been posted to see if this was already covered but couldn't find anything. So here goes.

My key fob quit working the other day so I thought I would order a new fob from Amazon to program myself with AlfaOBD. The lock button had quit working but the other buttons seemed to work just fine.

It had been a long time ago that I last used AlfaOBD and I had removed the bypass cable in case I had to take the truck back to the dealer while it was still under warranty. I was kind of dreading having to hook up the bypass again since it is a bit of a pain to tear in to the dash to connect everything up again.

When I opened up the broken fob, I saw that the little metal thingey (for lack of a better term) had fallen off the rubber section so that there would be no electrical connection completed when pressing the lock button. So I simply removed the rubber section from my broken fob and replaced it with the rubber section (which had all the metal thingeys attached in place) from the brand new fob. I then closed up the fob and everything worked as it was supposed to.

It took all of five minutes and cost slightly over $10 to get a working fob again. Hope this can save some time and money for somebody if and when a key fob button stops working.

 

[Flip-er]

Good tip and write up. thanks for sharing

 

[truckingrepair]

Thank you for sharing, this would be helpful for me and other people for sure also.

 

[Hardracer]

Good write up as another said.
Why didn't you just put all the inards from the old fob into the new fob and use that one though?
I've done it a few times from the cheap shells off ebay...like 6 bucks for 2...at that price point i could do it a whole bunch of times(i mean a ton of times)and never even get close to the cost of a factory fob and wouldn't care one bit if they fail say every 6 months(which they dont).I do get the reasoning behind wanting the factory fob case though(sentimental,shape,feel etc.)...for me that thing was so worn around the edges I just didnt care for it anymore.my main issue with either of them though is I wear off the rubber emblems rather quickly ..I must have sand-paper finger prints...lol

 

[diymirage]

i tried to do the same thing when i added remote start to my '17
(as you may, or may not know, the contact are all present in the fob, but not in the pad)

so i ordered just the pads and put those in my old fob

everything worked as it should, lock, unlock, remote start, even the alarm function worked
great

untill i got in the truck and put the fob in the ignition...and set of the alarm

turned out the new pad was just a tad thicker than the OEM one, and when i put the fob in the ignition it squeezed it enough to press the panic button

 

[Hardracer]

Oh geez...Always something isnt it?

 

[rick16706]

Good write up as another said.
Why didn't you just put all the inards from the old fob into the new fob and use that one though?
I've done it a few times from the cheap shells off ebay...like 6 bucks for 2...at that price point i could do it a whole bunch of times(i mean a ton of times)and never even get close to the cost of a factory fob and wouldn't care one bit if they fail say every 6 months(which they dont).I do get the reasoning behind wanting the factory fob case though(sentimental,shape,feel etc.)...for me that thing was so worn around the edges I just didnt care for it anymore.my main issue with either of them though is I wear off the rubber emblems rather quickly ..I must have sand-paper finger prints...lol

 

[rick16706]

The circuit board and battery setup were slightly different in the new fob so I wasn't able to just switch them out. The way I did it just seemed like the easiest way at the time. Thanks for the input though.

 

[rick16706]

Think I kind of screwed that up. I was trying to respond to Hardracer's question. Please bear with me.