How to save £100 or so

Now I know you shouldn't blow your own trumpet, but, I feel quite pleased about this one. We took the Astra for it's 120k mile service and told the bloke that none of the remote key fobs were working reliably. You could do the standard re-program1 and then next time you used either they wouldn't work.

They charged me £3.50 for a new battery and, spookily enough they worked. The next day they failed.

I took the car back and asked 'em what they were going to do about it. The service manager suddenly "had an idea"2, took the fob apart, had a good look, gently jiggled the battery cage and spotted a small crack in the "battery-pillar-to-circuit-board" connection.

"Hang on for 5 minutes, I can solder this" - sure enough, it now works just lovely. That gave me an idea for the second fob. Sure enough, I took it apart and it too exhibited the same cracked battery pillar posts3. The challenge was to find a small enough tip for my low-wattage soldering iron that could get between the black plastic holder and the circuit board.

Job done4.
1Key in ignition, turn on key to position 2 (just before starting) and within 10 seconds, press the lock button on the fob.
2I suspect that this is a common fault.
3You have to use a microscope or have eyes like a hawk and look where each of the two silver battery connections come from the black plastic battery holder and join to the circuit board.
4I suspect that if you're going to try this you know all about the mess hot irons can make of circuit boards and delicate IC's...

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