intelligent key fob range
 

has anyone noticed decreased range with the car's age? i swear a few months ago i could lock/unlock my car from a 100ft away. nowadays i have to take the key out of my pocket, and press the button within 5-10 feet of the car. the key to chin trick gives me an extra 10 feet maybe, but still not as much as before. i used to be able to lock from upstairs in my house to the garage. now i have to be in the garage!! :confused:

ive bought 2 different pairs of CR2032 batteries from different, local stores (to avoid fake batteries online). the good by date is 2022! no idea why the range is so bad now

Unless my car alarm is going off, or i need to use the panic button, my key fob stays in my pocket. The 370z locks on its own after 1 min when you unlock it and walk away. so i dont find a need to unlock it from within my house.

Pretty sure it doesn't?

I've not locked it in my garage and the next morning it's still unlocked...

Agree^. I'll double check that, but same here.....

or maybe its within distance when i unlock it. I'll unlock my car, wash it, and it will lock on its own every time..

I have never had this happen. Are you sure you aren't pushing the button when you bend down to wash?

Or are you pressing the button on the door?

I always press the button on the door to lock/unlock. I've gotten out of my car after turning it off, shut the door, and inspected my windshield wipers and the car will lock on its own without me pressing the key fob.

I always thought that the slot to place the Key fob in the Z helped it keep its charge and helped with range. I may be mistaken though.

I don't lock my car

I'm with the rest of these guys, the car doesn't have an auto lock function. It didn't on my Sport '09 and it doesn't on my S-T-Nav '13.

It relocks if I lock and unlock but don't open a door or gate.

No shitt :mad: :gtfo2:

Walk until ur alarm doesn't reach anymore.... Place the fob next to ur head and try again...it works!!

I saw this from Top Gear and it worked lol

no. our fobs dont have a rechargeable battery in them. its a basic lithium button cell

and do people not read? the key to the chin trick does work as i said in my original post. problem is, i used to be able to unlock my car from at least a 100ft away or through several walls. now i need to be within 5-10 feet of the damn car

and yes, there is an auto-lock functionality. if your car is locked, then you unlock the car, and dont open the door within a certain time, the car will relock itself. however, if you're driving, park, shut the car off, and walk away, it will NOT relock.

Well as for distance reduction. None at all, I am two wall and about 75ft away and I set off my alarm when I lean against the inspection table and forget to take my keys out of my pocket.

maybe the fob battery is low?

maybe you got rf interference from nearby towers?

maybe your fob switch itself is wearing out?

Yet another one of Nissan's choices that confounds me! If auto-lock is possible, then why not give the driver the choice to enable it for regular driving? Same with the alarm, beep vs honk. Why can I not configure the alarm to beep with the FOB, rather than honk, especially since the honk can be disabled. Give us options! Their designers were really short sighted, IMO.

Fob
 

quick fix: short term put on temple and activate. head increases range ( i know , ********. works!). i would assume battery change is in order

He has already changed the battery?

"ive bought 2 different pairs of CR2032 batteries from different, local stores (to avoid fake batteries online). the good by date is 2022! no idea why the range is so bad now"

nope. ive tried 4 different duracell's from the supermarket, target, amazon

could be..no idea what frequency these use

possibly. i do sit on it quite often. hmm this is probably the most likely


well, the doors also auto-lock once we hit 15mph. if you have navigation you can manually set the car to honk and/or beep when locking...etc. if you dont have navi, you can go to the dealer and ask them to modify the behavior using a consult III. its basically a fancy ODB reader. my dealership will do it for free for me since its a minor change that takes 10 sec

chops- glad i could help. :ugh:

My first guess is that it's a low fob battery but you seem to have ruled that out. I'd check the antennas and make sure they haven't moved, coax isn't nicked/crushed, or that you haven't somehow blocked them when making mods. Details in FSM.


Edit: First thing I'd do is check the contacts on the fob battery holder. A good buffing with a piece of denim or other rough cloth or a few swipes with a pencil eraser will usually remove any corrosion that may be present.

This^. First place to start.


Maybe this.^



Nah.

My fobgina just stopped working all together. Battery indicator in the car says its still over half. So I guess it's just broken, a trip to the dealer to complain is in my near future.

:rofl2:

Correct

So not to bump a a dead thread, but this is the number one thread on Google, and the exact "problem" my 370 seems to be having. According to the FSM though, the super long range is abnormal. My car was the same way for a little over the first year. At work, even back in the lab which I can't even get cell phone signal if I leaned against my desk, I could set off "car alarm". It was actually annoying, as I've even come out to my windows down. When it changed all the sudden I immediately changed the battery.

Going through the FSM, they actually say the range is 31.5 inches from the door handles, and the hatch release, approximately. They do say range however will depend on ambient conditions.

Best I can tell from the FSM, the antennas, are just for the intelligent key function to tell where the key is. It appears the receiver in the center under the hood is the part that actually receives / handles the lock/unlock requests.

It does specifically say to use within 3ft of each door, should I just assume this is what I am stuck with now?

is your phone also on you? that may reduce the distance.

Download the app and lock/unlock from your phone

OK so first thing I tried was replacing the battery in my key. Note my car is a 2016. Then I tried the other key that has never been used and has never left my safe, same issue. So then I did some testing and found my car has a range of 5-6 feet from both doors, but is almost completely blind from the rear. Which led me to believe it was the rear antenna. The only other problem with my car is the outside door unlock button on the passenger door has not worked for some time. That button has not worked for some time, but its the passenger door so I've let it go. The rear antenna is cheap and easy to replace but if its not that its pretty much the BCM, so much to my dismay I scheduled an appointment for the dealer to look at it since its under warranty.

Dealer claims they put a new battery in the remote and (I only took one key to them) and all the problems went away. When I went to pick it up (two hours after dropping it off) I brought up the other key and sure enough even it worked. So either there is some truth in their batteries are fresher than Walmarts or they wouldn't come clean on what actually fixed it. I think its the latter... But at least it works.

You really went to the dealer to have a fob battery replaced?

It may be your car/keys, as I’ve used key fob batteries from Walmart to gas stations and usually have about a 25-feet range. In fact, I can park my car inside the garage on the 1st floor and my bedroom is on the 3rd floor and can hear the beep when I lock from my bedroom. Also, batteries do have a long lifespan for storage (ie new inside the package and not being used).

I've seen my range go from "across the street" (2-lane), to like 3 feet, accidentally washed the fob, and now it's back to "across the street".

No....

So I believe I may have sorted out my problem. I have a ECUTek Bluetooth dongle in my car. This was not in the car when I took it to the dealer. Yesterday, repeatability every time I put that back in the car, it goes blind from the rear, and range sucks. Remove the BT dongle and it works fine. So I'm assuming the BT dongle is causing interference of some sort. I'm going to give it a few more days and see if it continues to work without that dongle.

ECUTek Bluetooth module
 

I had the same issue, the ECUTek bluetooth cut my fob range down to a couple feet. Unplugged the module and the range is back to 75 feet

I had this discussion with ECUTek's support and they at first claimed they had never heard of it and should not be possible since they operated on different frequencies. I shipped my dongle back to Dynosty for testing on their shop cars. Who also replicated the issue, although not quite to the same drastic degree as my car, but the range was drastically reduced. The same was true for all the other bluetooth dongles they had in stock.

After this confirmation, I have reached out again to ECUTek asking if a firmware update that shuts this thing down when the car is off is possible. They are supposed to be getting with development to find out.

This is an awesome find. I recently got tuned with ECUTek and I also have a range issue with my remote - bluetooth dongle as well. Feel free to mention that I confirmed that removing mine from the OBD has improved my range again. I actually have my dongle mounted deep inside the dash with an OBD-to-OBD extension cable.

I'm still working with ECUTek on this. I've created a separate thread for this issue.