2005 Avensis Key Fob Question

[StephenBK]

Greetings all. Both my two fobs have started to behave questionably. They both happily lock the car from even quite a distance, but it has become slow and difficult to persuade it to open. Very occasionally, from a few yards (usually behind) away it opens without hesitation, but more often than not it takes quite a lot of button pressing.

Might this be the batteries? If so does locking take less power than opening?

Or have they gone out of sync? I have read several other threads but am not sure which syncing method applies to my 2005 model, or indeed whether they are that reliable for a novice!

Tangent; the other morning when it was extremely frosty it took an absolute age to get it to open. The de-icing stuff was inside the car ... does the presence of frost on the windows affect the signal?

Thanks!

Stephen

[avensisd4d786]

I dont think syncing is a problem as you can lock

Batteries are cheap..change them report back

[Fitter]

I had this same problem with one of my key fobs. I found that the contacts were worn and fixed the problem by fitting a thicker Battery. The 2016 size is the fitted one. I put a 2025 Battery in and it worked perfectly and still does. 20 represents the millimetre diameter and 25 is the thickness in 2.5mm. The voltage is the same. It's worth a try as it's about £67 for a new key including the programming. Fitter

[StephenBK]

Thanks to both, will investigate those suggestions and report back!

[StephenBK]

Right its all sorted. It was indeed the batteries - to an extent. Bit more complicated though, it was also the contacts inside. For instance the second fob was fitted with the same (Duracell) Battery as the first but the car was not outside to test it - and when tried it didn't work! So I went back (as not having a very small screwdriver) and found that by very gingerly tweaking the contacts out a bit it could be made to work fine. I think this was done to an extent by the chap in the shop for the first fob but its a while ago now and its taken that time to get the situation really clear.

What remains mysterious is why with the previous batter/contact situation, the lock function was very effective but the unlock function very difficult; this was what confused me mightily and caused the suspicion that it was more than just the batteries.

The old batteries still had about 3 V in them, the new ones were reading about 3.5 or so. It may well be all they really needed was the contacts tweaking, and at a guess this may be reflected in the post above from Fitter about using thicker batteries - that would achieve a similar situation.

[sproutdreamer]

When my 03 central locking fob was acting up it was the rubber keypad that had lost its PIP i.e. the raised dot on the underside of the keypad had just worn away and was not pressing down the micro switch. A replacement rubber pad was a couple of pounds and once fitted all then all was well.