I've been fighting with my keyless entry for quite some time now on my 99 xj. My key fob will stop working over about a week of being used. I can make it work again by opening it up, sounds weird I know. The chip inside looks great, and the batteries are new. When I put it back together it works just fine for a few days. Then it will only respond to the lock button. Once I push the lock button, it will then respond when I use the unlock button. After about a week it will quit working and I'll have open the fob again.

Anybody else have this problem? I can't find anything with research regarding this problem.

 

I'm not sure but im curious to know. mine always worked great. then stopped so i replaced the batteries, and then a week later it stopped working again and i havent locked my doors since lol.

 

That's exactly what happened to me. I did the same thing. Right after I replaced the batteries I could lock and unlock it with some serious distance. Crack it open and give it a good look down, then put it back together and see if it works. It sounds extremely stupid, but somehow it works for me. I've done this about five times now.

 

Carefully look for a haze on the metal battery contacts. May be nearly invisible, but it could kill the connection. Clean with a pencil eraser and carefully remove any rubber flakes.

UPDATE! Feb 12 2014

This post originally caught my attention because I have problems with my key fob also. Right after my post, my keyless entry stopped working. I took my own advice and opened up the fob and checked the batterys (o.k. at 3 volts.). Cleaned contacts and put it back together. It still didn't work. I opened it up again and removed the pc board, separated the rubber contact pad. I CAREFULLY cleaned the black contact dots on the rubber pad with a DRY q-tip. I then cleaned the gold contact pads on the pc board with a q-t damp with WD-40 and again with a clean, dry q-tip. Put it back together and now it works fine.

Caution:

The black contact dots are porus rubber infused with carbon. A rough cleaning will remove the conductive carbon and ruin your key fob. Clean exactly as I described and you should be O.K.

 

If the battery is good (3V) the switch contacts are failing.

 

The connections looked okay, I bent the one prong up slightly to make a better connection. I've seen no difference.

 

One thing I haven't tried is messing with the panic button when the other ones won't work. It would make sense seeing as the unlock button would be most worn out. The panic button is essentially untouched, so if this is the problem and the batteries are good, the panic button should work everytime. I'm going to try a new set of batteries just because.

 

My 2000 has done this part for years. I'll click the unlock button and nothing happens. I have to click lock, then unlock, and then it works fine. Mine doesn't fade away like yours, though. It only does the lock-unlock thing, as if locking it reminds it what it's supposed to do. I just figured that was a quirk of these things.

 

I threw my key fob for my 98 XJ away, 10 years ago. Never missed it. Neither my 94 XJ, or my 12 JK have electric locks. I never own one with it before, and it looks like I never will have one. Keys works just fine.

 

Congratulations

 

Within the past few days the remote quit working as expected. Now to try some of the suggested fixes.

 

I had an issue similar to yours with a used key fob I bought off of eBay for cheap for my XJ when I found out it had keyless entry after I bought it and got a build sheet.


Then I bought a new fob OEM (Ouch!) everything has worked properly since 2+ yrs. now.

 

still trying to figure mine out too. its only a couple years old so I'm stumped

 

i threw away my power steering pump. manual steering is so much nicer

 

my 2000 does that too. annoying when I'm leaving somewhere residential late at night and i have to lock it and make it beep before i can unlock it.