Car radio key button broken – what now?

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At some point the buttons on the car radio key give up, a button is broken and the radio key stops working. The electronics are rarely affected and the damage is limited to replacing the housing.

This one offers replacement housings, for example Shop cheap and with quick delivery. Searched for the right housing, ordered it and received it within a few days. Now it was time to extract the electronics from the old housing.

Dismantling

After you open the old case in the usual way, as if you wanted to change the battery, you can also see the circuit board, but only the part in which the battery holder is located. The remaining part of the housing is almost cast or jammed so tightly that it is hardly possible to open it.

The only option was to use a coarse milling cutter (Dremel or similar) to remove the housing layer by layer until the circuit board was completely free and could finally be removed.

When milling, please proceed with extreme caution and plenty of leisure: haste can quickly result in a milled board. Hurry with time is therefore the top priority! So always nice and slow...!

Assembly

Assembling the board is quick. It is simply placed with the mounting holes on the small plastic nipples and positioned with light pressure.

Installing the mechanical key in exchange for the dummy key is trickier. So that the key jumps into position when the release button is pressed, a spring is preloaded in the key joint.
This preload must be re-introduced when inserting the original key and then turning the key twice with the spring engaged.

The housing can then be put on, the battery inserted, the function tested and the battery compartment closed with the battery compartment cover.