'98 keyless entry quit?

Hey guys, I tried searching, but didn't find what I needed. The key fob for my '98 seemed to be getting weak as I needed to be right in front of the Jeep for it to work, and now it quit altogether. I popped the FOB apart and found TWO 3v batteries stacked on top of each other in the battery department. I thought that was wierd, but purchased two new ones and reinstalled them in the same manner that I removed them, but the FOB will not work. Any suggestions? Jeff

Jeff 98XJ WI said:

Hey guys, I tried searching, but didn't find what I needed. The key fob for my '98 seemed to be getting weak as I needed to be right in front of the Jeep for it to work, and now it quit altogether. I popped the FOB apart and found TWO 3v batteries stacked on top of each other in the battery department. I thought that was wierd, but purchased two new ones and reinstalled them in the same manner that I removed them, but the FOB will not work. Any suggestions? Jeff

Click to expand...

Check the new batteries and make sure there is no little piece of clear plastic on any of their sides. Put your old ones back in again and retest the keyfob...

make sure the little contact piece didnt fall out from the under side of the batteries and they are in the proper position

i had a similar problem.
it wasn't the FOB but my battery terminals under the hood were pretty messy.
i cleaned them, got a newer better red topped thing, and used some battery grease on the terminals to prevent further corrosion.
after this both FOBs worked killer...but this is just another idea to look at.
2%

Thanks for the replies guys. I stopped by the dealer yesterday and he also suggested double checking the batteries for charge and correct orientation as the FOB isn't capable of being reprogrammed. Only the vehicle side of the equation needs to be programmed to match a particular FOB and since I didn't change FOB's, there most likely isn't a problem there. He did confirm that two batteries are stacked on one another. So, I opened up the FOB one more time and found out that I had installed the batteries Backwards...more than once! I turned them over, popped the thing back together and tried it...no go. I pulled the batteries out again and checked them for charge. Turns out they were quite low...2.1V and 1.5V or something like that. These were the NEW ones. The packages only showed 2002 on them with no "sell by" date or anything. So, do you think they discharged by being installed backward for a couple days? I then checked the OLD batteries voltages and came up with 3.1V for each of them! What the hell. So, I reinstalled them in the correct orientation, tried the FOB, and it worked just fine! Who knows. Jeff