wanted to share with the community how i fixed a remote keyfob where the switch was stuck open. what i mean by that is that when you push the clicker to open the doors, the switch was stuck in the down position...and would not come back. after finding out how much money it was to buy a new fob, i simply used my spare fob until the same problem happened on that key the other day. we drive our prius as out primary car so the fob gets quite a workout. but the vehicle is running perfectly at 100K miles. well anyway, i had to get serious on the fob or i was going to be spending hundreds of dollars that i didn't want to spend. my dealer told me they could only think of new fobs as the answer. ok...so here is what i did. with an exacto knife i carefully scored the edge between the rubber cover of the button pad where it joined the plastic (did this only around the close button) and carefully pulled the rubber back about 1/3 the length of the rubber pad. (kind of like pulling the lid off a sardine can with the lid being the rubber key pad) to my surprise, as soon as the rubber was loose, the buttons clicked again. i suspect that what happens is after aging, the rubber deforms (not sure if it shrinks or expands) and was holding the underlying switch for the door open in the down position (e.g., the mechanical switch did not have enough spring to push the rubber back up...so it was held permanently down). i then got a little black silicone adhesive and glued the rubber cover down a bit looser than its original position and the key worked perfectly. performed the same surgury on the second key...and it too came back to life. so two working keys for about an hours work. hope this helps others. howard
THANK YOU! Saved me a few hundred books. Worked perfectly. The rubber is pretty firm so you have to score it good.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!! Have had this same issue on my key FOB for past two or 3 years! Have just been using my second FOB instead of investing time and money for new FOB. Started having issues with the FOB I have been using and didn't realize that there was a REPLACEABLE battery inside of it! So I replace that battery and did more research to the unlocking button issue on my not being used FOB. I came across your post and fixed it as you stated. I will need to run out and get some of the black silicone adhesive to finish up the job. Thank you for posting! 2008 package 6 silver prius
One of my fobs is functioning intermittently in that a button press does not always work as evident from the fact that the little red LED does not always glow on a button press even with a fresh battery. The rubber on top of the buttons has distorted over time though it has not torn nor do the underlying buttons seem stuck but this repair method may work for me. Certainly beats buying a new silver fob and doing the chicken dance or paying someone to do the programming!
