Hopefully somebody can shed some light on this for me as a thorough search has not yielded anything helpful;

I have a MY00, one of the very early 99 ones with no alarm. It just has the standard 3 button (lock/unlock/boot) fob.

The problem is that it seems to be working very intermittently. I have swapped a brand new battery into the fob and the LED comes on just fine when you press buttons, but they only seem to have any effect every ten tries or so if at all, at which point I give up and unlock with the key.

The door actuators seem to be ok as they both lock/unlock with no sounds of struggling from the key, and when the remote fob does work they sound ok. The cars battery should also be in good shape. The boot opens fine with the button in the glove box and when the fob works. Cycling through lock/unlock on the fob seems to help sometimes.

I imagine there is some kind of receiver in the car somewhere for this, it seems to me like this could be the issue. The range of the fob has decreased from about 20ft to at most 5ft over the years.

Any input greatly appreciated.

 

I had issues with my key fob and I *think* it was a battery connection issue ... do you have another key fob you can try?

Mine don't have an led on though as I would have thought if yours has an led that is lighting up then it stands to reason that it is working!

I would try making sure the pins are clamping the battery tightly and that the connections are clean with a small file or a bit of sandpaper

 

Unfortunately I don't have a spare fob to try, but as you said the fact the LED is working would suggest its ok.

I would have thought if there were any problems with the car battery it would have been reseting my clocks from KM/ph to M/ph or dimming the lights etc. no?

 

sorry, I meant the pins for the battery in the key fob

 

The alarms are horrendous on the early cars, I'd be tempted just to change for a new alarm system, it's the next thing to be changed on mine

 

Pins touching the battery seem to be fine, they are making contact and clean.

@J_D The car does not have an alarm system, it is exactly as it came from the factory in 1999.