Royville
Senior Member
Hello again,
I didn’t think I'd be posting so soon here, I only joined a few days ago saying how thrilled I was with my c180 elegance.
However! - On Wednesday I went to get in my car to go to work as usual only to find that it wouldn’t unlock. I suspected the batteries in the key fob so I took them out, tested, cleaned and re-fitted them. All was fine so I went to work. When I got out of the car to lock it, nothing happened again. Anyway to cut a long story short I had to call the RAC and he ended up fitting a link between a couple of wires on one of the electronic units under the passenger foot well to enable me to start the engine to get home. He told me to take it to a main agent ASAP as I shouldn't run it like that for too long. I was 99% sure my key fob was duff so I contacted MB and to my horror they said a replacement was £130 + vat, would take about 10 days to come from Germany and the it would have to be programmed to my car.
I decided to try and open up the key fob myself to see if I could do anything with it. I had read on the forum somewhere that trying to open them usually resulted in their destruction but after much slicing with a sharp modeling knife and prizing with jewelers screwdrivers I got it open. When I found the little button spring which flirted out I also noticed that a tiny push button had become detached from its 4 soldered pads on the little PCB. I thought this must be the problem!
I carefully re-soldered it back into place and re-soldered the +ve battery tag as its joint looked in poor condition. Everything else looked ok so I painstakingly re-assembled it and fitted the batteries. When I pressed the button, after about a second the red light came on briefly, - which I had never seen before. I went out to the car and disconnected the link that had been fitted by the RAC chap and to arm/disarm the immobilizer but to no avail. Then I remembered that I needed to go through a synchronizing sequence which I did, and that did the trick, - Everything works fine now as it should and I’ve saved myself about £150 or more.
I thought I'd post this message incase anyone else has had a similar problem to this, hoping it may be of some use.
I'm going to check out a local 'Indy' tomorrow in the Staffs area, if I have my car serviced there I'll let you know how it went on.
Regards
Roy.
I didn’t think I'd be posting so soon here, I only joined a few days ago saying how thrilled I was with my c180 elegance.
However! - On Wednesday I went to get in my car to go to work as usual only to find that it wouldn’t unlock. I suspected the batteries in the key fob so I took them out, tested, cleaned and re-fitted them. All was fine so I went to work. When I got out of the car to lock it, nothing happened again. Anyway to cut a long story short I had to call the RAC and he ended up fitting a link between a couple of wires on one of the electronic units under the passenger foot well to enable me to start the engine to get home. He told me to take it to a main agent ASAP as I shouldn't run it like that for too long. I was 99% sure my key fob was duff so I contacted MB and to my horror they said a replacement was £130 + vat, would take about 10 days to come from Germany and the it would have to be programmed to my car.
I decided to try and open up the key fob myself to see if I could do anything with it. I had read on the forum somewhere that trying to open them usually resulted in their destruction but after much slicing with a sharp modeling knife and prizing with jewelers screwdrivers I got it open. When I found the little button spring which flirted out I also noticed that a tiny push button had become detached from its 4 soldered pads on the little PCB. I thought this must be the problem!
I carefully re-soldered it back into place and re-soldered the +ve battery tag as its joint looked in poor condition. Everything else looked ok so I painstakingly re-assembled it and fitted the batteries. When I pressed the button, after about a second the red light came on briefly, - which I had never seen before. I went out to the car and disconnected the link that had been fitted by the RAC chap and to arm/disarm the immobilizer but to no avail. Then I remembered that I needed to go through a synchronizing sequence which I did, and that did the trick, - Everything works fine now as it should and I’ve saved myself about £150 or more.
I thought I'd post this message incase anyone else has had a similar problem to this, hoping it may be of some use.
I'm going to check out a local 'Indy' tomorrow in the Staffs area, if I have my car serviced there I'll let you know how it went on.
Regards
Roy.
