Keyless Entry Range

[Wildman]

I searched and came up with nothing. Anybody know a way to increase the factory keyless range. Sometimes I have to be like 5 feet away from my car, (and no its not the remote battery!!) Is there a way to like, extend an antenna or anything?

[FormulaNERD]

mines the same :(

[Wildman]

if someone knew the wiring of the car, i'm sure we could come up with a way to improve the range somehow...

[bigd6983]

all you gotta do is check out the haynes manual for a wiring diagram....

[Crolero]

mine can reach really far not sure how far but if i park across the street i can reach it from the 4th floor without a problem.

[doubleN0alero]

I mean, i know this is common sense here, but i've found that my range varies depending where I am...if i'm at workk where there is alot of interference and the same with school, i really have to work at it, to get the damn thing to lock, but at my house and at my parents house, there appears to be much more range.

[blueyezalero]

A guy had told me about this trick with alarms don't know if it'd work with keyless entry but you can try.

Make sure your on pavement not grass. Stick the remote under your chin, the end of the remote that you'd point at the car.....touching underneath your chin and press the button. Seems silly but it does work on alarms and don't be hiding behind a tree or building trying. Try in a parking lot.

[doubleN0alero]

LOL, that turns you into a giant antenna!!

[bigd6983]

lol yea i had a friend tell me that once too, and ive tried it but i still am not too sure about it..........

[Wildman]

Maybe I'll just wire one of those mini satellite dishes to it, and I can point it right at my car then hit the button :P

[cherrington17]

doing that actually uses the back of your skull as a satellite dish...lol it works, i did it personally when a friend told me the same thing.

a guy i work with has a minivan he did this to....
if you want to try this with your spare remote(if you have one) open the case up, and look at the circuit board. there should be a small trace the almost completely circles the outside of the board. that is the "antenna". take a high gauge wire, with as little insulation as possible and solder it to the spot where the trace started on the board. then have the wire stick out some from the remote case (about an inch or two) that should drastically improve your range.

i was thinking about doing it, but decided not to.. i'm too lazy...lol i can still hit mine from like 20 ft away.

[Wildman]

this would be very simple if somebody could come up with a schematic for the remote and or figure out where the receiver is in the car for it. Does it use the antennas in the rear window?

[bigd6983]

no i dont think it uses anything in the rear windows thats the defroster and antenna for the radio.......what cherrington said sounds like something id like 2 try......

[mdodge]

Anybody know what kind of signal the keys use. Frequency? I thought it was more of a IR type device at first.

[cherrington17]

heres a pic of my own "keyfob" i guess they are called.

[FormulaNERD]

it's uses low range radio frequency (rf)

[FormulaNERD]

Originally posted by mdodgealero@Nov 19 2004, 10:14 PM
Anybody know what kind of signal the keys use. Frequency? I thought it was more of a IR type device at first.
an IR device would be horrible, especially on sunny days, and you'd also have to have an LED exposed like in a tv remote.

[mdodge]

Originally posted by FormulaNERD+Nov 20 2004, 01:00 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (FormulaNERD @ Nov 20 2004, 01:00 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-mdodgealero@Nov 19 2004, 10:14 PM
Anybody know what kind of signal the keys use. Frequency? I thought it was more of a IR type device at first.
an IR device would be horrible, especially on sunny days, and you'd also have to have an LED exposed like in a tv remote. [/b][/quote]
Yeah i realized that quickly. It always seems to vary on range. Mine sometimes can reach quite a ways...like across a big parking lot. Depends on what interference is floating through the air I guess.

[Wildman]

My circuit baord doesnt look like that

[Vtolds]

Originally posted by Wildman@Nov 21 2004, 06:50 PM
My circuit baord doesnt look like that
Possible differences in years?

[FormulaNERD]

mine looks different as well, but still has the antenna trace around. its just alot thinner.

[Wildman]

I thought mine did have that trace also, until i looked a lot closer and realized that its got connections at both ends. it doesnt just end. theres spots at each end that connect to things. Is this still the antenna?? im going to get a picture of this bad boy right now...

[1WhiteOSV]

as odd as this sounds....try holding the remote up to your chin..like under it....your body/head actually acts as a little signal booster. It might get you a few extra feet or so if it works.....otherwise there's really no way to increase the factory keyless range w/o just switching to a better unit (like Viper)

[Sno]

thats wierd, cuz my stock key fob works fine, like.... 20 or so ft away from the car... never had that problem before

[darksobsession]

what cherrington said!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f-g2W4ZoEw&feature=channel

[cherrington17]

^that may or may not work.

each remote willl have a slightly different signal on it. because of this, if you want that "antenna" to work, you'll need to know what wave length that signal is, and cut the wire to match that (1 full waveform).

ALSO, because your using a longer antenna, and in theory, broadcasting further, you will be using more battery power.

[lonnie]

If you are losing range it is more likely that the transmitter is drifting off frequency. I have the same problem with my transmitter now...and the cause is because the crystal is off frequency...when I open it up I noticed that when ever I held the crystal down while pushing the button the transmitter worked as normal, but when I didn't have pressure on the crystal it would hardly work at all...at first I thought the crystal had a bad connection to the board which I posted in another thread but it isn't the case...once under a magnifier I could see that the sold joints were solid which then told me it was the crystal it self...But this is in my case!!

If you are losing range and it isn't the battery then it will take more then adding a wire and possibly damaging the transmitter to fix it..May be time for a new one..Although mine is still working I will be replacing it very soon. Good luck!

Also a longer antenna does not mean that you broadcast further (no offense cherry). Every remote is tuned at a certain frequency mine for example is at 433MHZ. If I was to press a button on my transmitter and I had a frequency counter( which I had) it would read some where around 433MHZ, the antenna that is built into you remote is cut to that wavelength. Now there is deviation that the brain will recognize..what I mean by deviation is the amount of frequency drift for example if you were to press a button and it read 430MHZ if the brain is setup for + or - 4 MHZ then the brain would still respond to the transmitter. Adding more wire to that antenna in the transmitter changes the wavelength and therefore changes the frequecy range that it will recieve.

So cherry the guy you knew that did that probably got lucky to be within the frequecy range that his transmitter drifted to.

[cherrington17]

actually.. the guy i knew that did this, had one of the most elaborate rf setups i've ever witnessed. giant ham/shortwave/cb guy. hes a little crazy with it. so he knew exactly what he was doing. (and knows more about it then any of us) PLUS his remote was much older and already has a small antenna wire attached. Ours just has that trace around the outside of the remote.

He also added alot more antenna under his headliner, on the recieving end. Again, not sure how he did this, i just know he did.

i won't try it, for the exact reason you stated. its not a guaranteed fix, and you might make things worse.

[lonnie]

actually.. the guy i knew that did this, had one of the most elaborate rf setups i've ever witnessed. giant ham/shortwave/cb guy. hes a little crazy with it. so he knew exactly what he was doing. (and knows more about it then any of us) PLUS his remote was much older and already has a small antenna wire attached. Ours just has that trace around the outside of the remote.

He also added alot more antenna under his headliner, on the recieving end. Again, not sure how he did this, i just know he did.

i won't try it, for the exact reason you stated. its not a guaranteed fix, and you might make things worse.
Cool! Do you know his call sign...Mine is KB3KWV...I just didn't want to see some one that doesn't do that to mess up there remote trying to do it. LOL does he have one of the remotes with the extendable antennas...LOL? I mess with electronics on a daily basis and I wouldn't attempt it. I could't imagine some one that barely doing any electronic work attempting something like that...the crystal as I called it above is really the transmitter, now imagine if I told someone that, that there is a transmitter in your transmitter.. Anywho I didn't mean to offend you if you took it that way.

[cherrington17]

his... no. i could find out though.

[lonnie]

his... no. i could find out though.Cool!