I've had the Oem alarm in my car for a while, not the fatcory keyless entry, the upgrade. My remote only reaches about 20 ft away. It has always been this limited since I had it. I tried changing batteries and remotes but its always about the same. Anyone elses Oem alarm like this or is it just mine?

 

i also have oem alarm, dealer installed it as part of the sale deal.
the antenna is under the driver's seat, in a spot for poor reception. make sure that the antenna wire is fully extended, it is zip tied down. i doubt that it will get much better however.

 

I have the keyless entry unit and the range is pretty good - I would say at least 100 ft.

 

My antenna is fully extended and it still sucks.
Really, 100 ft, my original keyless entry couldnt even do that, I know the Acura keyless entry works even better.

 

Yep - 100 ft in most cases if the car is in direct line of sight.

The old trick to extending the range on remotes is to put the remote under and touching your chin - then push the button. Your head (along with any fillings you may have) works as a pretty good transmission antenna.

 

Why do you need to activate the keyless entry system from 100 feet away? Even if you could run the 100 yard dash in world record time, it would still take you at least 3 seconds to get to your car. If you were near enough to the car to get in, you would also be within the usable range of the remote. On the other hand, if you always forget to lock the door, then you would save yourself 160 feet round trip of walking to return to the diminished range of the oem alarm, thus costing you about 40 seconds of time. If you forgot 4 times a day, every day of the year, then you would lose about 12 hours every year and travel 40 miles unnecessarily. On the plus side, with the shorter range that you have now, you would improve your cardiovascular fitness and live longer. With relativity effects, you may also extend your longevity by a few microseconds because of your greater velocity. Maybe even leap years will not seem to be quite as long.

 

fmah, you went way to deep into it. I appreciate your extra thoughts though. I'm in good shape I dont need extra exercise, plus I'm lazy. The problem was I sometimes forget to lock the doors and the alarm doesn't work from in the house, its to far away. I dont feel like going all the way outside at 3 am because I dont remember if I locked the door or not. my alarm only works from at the most 20ft away. I was just wondering if everyone elses was like that or if there was a way to extend the range.
Yea, I know about the chin trick but for some reason it still dosent work that well with this alarm.

 

set it to the auto door lock feature. alarm arms and doors lock 30 seconds after the last door or trunk closes.

just never leave your keys on the dash or the seat and close the door. will not lock if left in the ignition though.