Button bank mod DIY (garage opener/boot release)

[beautyforashes]

Very cool of u to take the time to photo and post.

[Padawan]

If anyone is looking for a spare button bank to modify, I have one available. It's virtually brand new, and has heated seat buttons as well as three blanks. Feel free to send me a message or email me.

[jsenka]

Any new ideas on the garage door remote switch workaround?

[Fritz]

I looked at Evilution's button bank info again and he mentioned that the switches (except for the end ones) are momentary switches.

I took a multimeter to my button bank and confirmed that the switches are momentary closed switches and not momentary open switches like the discussions about transistors would leave you to believe.

After re-looking at Cubefx's mods I think I found the problem. You need to disconnect the "hot" wire from the wiring harness. The garage remote should be connected instead of the hot wire, not with it. For example, in Cubefx's mod, you need to snip the blue wire (and cap it) and solder the red wire to it. Otherwise the car will supply 12V to your remote and depending of how the remote is wired, you could get a current flow through the remote. Snipping the wire let's you use the switch isolated from the car's 12V circuit.

Important note: you don't want to snip the brown wire since all your buttons depend on that for ground.

Finally, I found another good place for the remote. I put mine under the cover that you remove to get to the radio. There's plenty of room and the remote isn't buried down in the metal part of the car. I think it will improve the range.

Hopefully, I didn't miss anything- I'll let you know if I end up with the same battery problem. Good luck and thanks to Evilution and Cubefx for paving the way for the rest of us.

[Gilbert's]

I never gone that far but i installed the one came from MBZ CLK i might post a picture....

[jsenka]

Thanks Fritz,

I'll be watching for an update.

[Fritz]

It turns out my version of the wiring has the same problem. The voltage was a little lower, but same general problem. The button bank still applies a voltage to the switch line.

Looking at the button bank circuit card, it might be possible to remove some components to make the switch just a switch, but without a schematic it is too hard (for me) to trace all the circuits and safely do this.

It was worth a try, but I've removed the remote to avoid any problems with trons going to the wrong places.

[brett2658]

what are the unuse prewired buttons set aside for by smart?

[John_H]

Depends what you have configured.

The center button is the hazards and the buttons to the left and right of that are lock and unlock, respectively, with an LED on the lock button.

The outside two buttons are for heated seats with two LEDs each.

The right side also has TPMS reset (outside) and Alarm motion sensor disable (inside) buttons with an LED for the alarm side.

The left also has a rear fog lamp button (outside) - something you probably won't find in the US - and an unused button location inside of that with a place for an LED but no LED is installed and no pin in the wiring harness that connects to the button bank. Or at least I think that's how those two are configured. There are still a couple components hooked up in the unused switch's path - not sure how they behave.

[Padawan]

Originally Posted by John_H

The left also has a rear fog lamp button (outside) - something you probably won't find in the US - and an unused button location inside of that with a place for an LED but no LED is installed and no pin in the wiring harness that connects to the button bank. Or at least I think that's how those two are configured. There are still a couple components hooked up in the unused switch's path - not sure how they behave.

On the left side, you have the driver's heated seat to the far left with two red LEDs, then the front fog lamps (with green LED), then a blank spot where the rear fog lamp would be, then the Lock button with red LED