It’s been a LONG time since I’ve written one of these, and there’s much to report on what I’ve done to transform the rig. Today I’m just going to write about my ignition key, though. I’ll try to keep it tight.

the other day, out second master key for the rig gave up the ghost; the blade separated from the case. This gave the good excuse to order a new case from YotaMD. The wife didn’t even bat an eye at the cost. I bought a YotaMD case for our primary key (the one that I use everyday) and love both the case and the company’s responsiveness to my questions. I’m glad i was able to do business with them again.

Unfortunately, after I ordered the case earlier this week, I took the old fob apart to change its battery. (The wife said it the key hadn’t been unlocking the doors.) The battery change went well, but a winy transceiver (that I didn’t know existed) fell out of the silicon casing while I was fiddling with the battery. It fell on the floor and was swept into the garbage.

The new YotaMD case arrived today, and I set about shifting the fob and key blade into the new case. All seemed to go well until I tried to start the rig. THe engine wouild catch and start to turn over, but the motor wouldn’t start. Did the key need to be programmed because I’d changed the battery?

I set about looking online for instructions for reprogramming the key, and I learned all about the remote part of the key and the immobilizer part. And I learned about all the procedures out there for putting a rig into programming mode and communicating with a new key. Thank the gods for ih8mud! I tried four different procedures, each of them multiple times, and none worked for me. None turned my second key into a master that the rig’s security system would allow to turn off the immobilizedr (i.e., stop the security light on the dashboard blinking).

Then I saw this post on ih8mud, learned about the transceiver nestled inside the silicon case of the key fob, and realized I might have lost it when I was changing the battery.

Picture of silicon case holding a tiny transceiver

There was a good chance I lost this before garbage day, so I dug into the two bags of kitchen garbage in our family bins and dug through the refuse. It was gross, but I found the tiny darling. After checking that it wasn’t just a scrap piece of plastic, I added it into the new key and the key fob functioned like a champ, locking and unlocking doors and starting the engine.

I learned a bunch today about my rig’s keys, mostly from reading posts online, and partly from trying lots of stuff. I’m glad that I realized I lost the tiny transciever and didn’t dump more time into things like Techstream and going to a dealer to ask for their help. For this I’m sending a big “thank you” to the folks who shared online what they knew about their rig!