bbirdwell

Moral of the story: be very careful when sliding the circuit board back into the key fob shell

I removed the circuit board a few days ago while troubleshooting an intermittent "lock" button. Circuit board hung up a bit when reinserting and I just applied enough pressure to get the board inserted. Yep, key fob would no longer work in the ignition switch (Keyless-Go worked fine). Confirmed no LED flash from the nose of the key fob using my cell phone camera. Removed the board and see the infra-red LED is no longer on the front of the board. Fortunately, the LED was still in the shell. I had to use magnifying head loupes to see the solder on the LED; once I could see the solder remains, the LED could only be installed one way. Used a clip to hold the LED in place, applied heat and solder, and confirmed the key once more works in the ignition switch.

So...be gentle!

tlambert

Good to know info. Thanks for sharing Barry.

99lightning

i cant unlock or lock with mine it went through the washer machine and drier a few times by accident.

bbirdwell

It may be worth a try to purchase a used key fob off of eBay. Then find a small stereo or electronics repair shop or if you have the skills, you would remove all four of the push buttons off of your current key fob and then remove from the used key fob the push buttons on those and install them on yours and see if that will do the trick. I literally repaired the infrared LED issue on my key fob in approximately 10 minutes. The push buttons have two leads on each side and you would have to find some way to remove the solder then just Mount the new ones. It beats paying $450 for a new key fob.

bbirdwell

Alternatively getting used key fob, identify the chip on your key fob that has the VIN stored in it, and have the chip from your board installed onto the other board taking your VIN with that chip. There is a post either on this forum or Benz world that talks about how to do it.