My key fob lights up with button presses, and the key works fine to lock and unlock the car, deactivating and reactivating the alarm system, but nothing happens with button presses other than the red light illuminating.

This happened after the negative cable came loose recently and the car wouldn't start, necessitating tapping the cable back down. I've had problems with these stinking cables not tightening down on the posts, so I've installed post shims. The positive cable post shim helps it be tight, but the negative side is too tight with the shim and won't go down all the way. Still working on a good fit there so it doesn't keep getting partially dislodged after a bump. It's never fully off, just about 2/3rds of the way off, so it drives fine, just won't restart if that happens until you pop the hood and tap it back down.

Anyway, I've tried the trick of turning it to the right, holding the lock button until the right button flashes fast, then releasing the button and turning it to the left and doing the same with the unlock button. Still doesn't do anything.

Any ideas or familiarity with this problem?

 

Has the remote ever worked, since you've owned the vehicle?

 

Yes, we've owned it a year and it's worked the whole time.

Where in Arkansas do you live? It's nice to meet a neighbor on the board.

 

I'm also in Northwest Arkansas.

Did it stop working after you repaired the sunshades? The RF receiver for the remotes is above the headliner

 

Very cool, maybe we'll cross paths.

No, that was several months ago and all I did was put a screw and piece of metal through the latch, didn't mess with anything around it. Programming issue?

 

Crazy suggestion. Have you swapped the battery.

Only say it because mine is going, and the little light on the fob still lights.

 

It might be. I've got a scanner we could use to check the programming.

 

Haven't done that, cappedup, I'll try that tomorrow!

Cool, Jafir, if it comes down to it I may hit you up.

 

My reasoning is that it must take less power to light the than it does send the signal, so the signal drops first.

Hope it's that simple.

 

I changed the battery out and while the red light seems brighter now on the fob, that didn't fix it. At least I have a new battery! Good thought though.

I performed a reset of the electrical by disconnecting the battery, connecting the negative and positive connections to each other with some soldering wire (don't know if it even did anything), and waited a couple minutes and reconnected the battery cables to the battery.

The fob works!

Seems like maybe the program that runs the fob froze up or something and resetting it did the trick.