A key fob mystery to solve.
 

So I had a rental car on a business trip, and the rental car was doing well. It was a newish Chevrolet Malibu. At some point a few days ago, I pulled into a hotel parking lot. I'm not sure if it's relevant, but the hotel was on a Native American reservation.

Boom.

The turnoff was weird, and I got a message on the instrument panel that the car did not detect a key fob. This is problematic for a variety of reasons.

The logical conclusion is that the battery died. I'm not a handy guy, but with the help of youtube I figured out how to change it. I was lucky that the hotel was next door to a grocery store that carried that type of battery.

I went up to my hotel room, switched the battery out, and went downstairs to test it. As I was walking toward the car, the car alarm started going off on the vehicle next to mine, which was a newish Nissan SUV.

A guy got out of the Nissan. "Sorry about the noise," he said. "I pulled in here and parked, and my key fob died, and I can't figure out how to fix it."

At that point I tested mine and it didn't work, either. I was able to pilot it back to the rental car agency by using a secret trick that I learned on youtube. It involved removing a piece of trim from the door and putting the dead fob in a specific spot in the car, and it was black magic.

The rental car woman seemed like a longtime rental veteran, and she was friendly. She noticed that the car had 2,000 miles on it and said there's no way that the battery should have died. I told her about the Nissan next to mine, and we puzzled over what happened, and if the two failures were related. It seems really odd that two key fobs on two adjacent cars would fail as they were both parking.

What are your theories?

Both of you parked on an Indian burial ground.

That's a poll option!

Oh, I just watched these episodes.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/b02ff584...x52o4_500.gifv

ARE YOU GAY?

WAS THE NISSAN DRIVER GAY?!

Two Indians put their ears to the ground........

The first Indian says: "Buffalo come".

The second Indian says: "Buffalo no come".

The first Indian places his ear back on the ground and repeats "Buffalo come".

The second Indian places his ear back on the ground and says "I no hear anything, why you think buffalo come?"

The first Indian replies "Ear sticky".

Did the fob work after you left the hotel or was it completely dead the rest of the trip?

Also, you had to remove door trim to manually connect it? Any car I've ever used that had push button start had a slot in the dash or a place in the armrest to use a fob with a dead battery.

I was once on a flight to Vegas with several legitimate, from a reservation 'Native Americans'. We drank several of those little airplane 1 ounce hard liquor bottles and became friendly. I asked them in confidence what they prefer to be called - Native American is the US thing but in Canada it is First Nations, and of course Indians is a term too. They laughed at me and said dont overthink it. We call ourselves Indians, we always have in our lifetimes, so Indians is fine.

Until an actual Indian corrects me on that, and not white people with big hearts, I'm gonna keep on callin em Indians.

Did you program the key fob? Pair it with the car?

Black helicopters?

Tell me about the black helicopters...

I took my best guess in the poll, but not many are voting, because this is indeed a mystery.

If you were traveling for work, and were using an Amex, I would call their traveler assistance number right away and raise hell. They are pros.

I cant believe you fixed the battery yourself by taking part of the door off. You Macguyver?

I would have gone through Amex. Other corporate credit cards have similar programs.

It was dead from the moment it failed, even with a new battery.

The weird thing was that the fob had a manual key that pulled out of the fob. The manual key worked on the door, but only if you took part of the door handle off. The place to put the key was underneath a trim piece on the handle. There was even a little slot under the trim piece where you could insert the key to help wedge the piece off.

Since there was a manual key, I figured there would be a place to insert the key to start the car. But oddly enough, that was not the case. It turned out that there was a sensor inside the storage area of the console. There was a tiny plastic piece where, if you put the fob into it, the car would recognize the circuitry even though the fob was dead. I would've never found that on my own in a million years, and it's very strange that it worked. The plastic fence didn't seem to fit the fob at all - it's not like it snapped in or had a snug fit. It was just a little raised plastic wall that you'd drop the fob into.

This I believe may be the problem.

Or it could just be aliens.

My theory was that the fob de-paired with the car when I pulled the battery out, though neither youtube nor the Avis woman indicated that that was likely. The big mystery to me, though, is two parts: was there a connection between two adjacent new cars killing their fobs in an identical manner, and why did neither of them work when the battery was replaced.

I think something murdered the fobs.

Were you near Roswell New Mexico??

I’d like to know what color the Malibu was before choosing my answer.

In galactic terms, I was very close. In earth terms, not close at all.

It was white. Do you think maybe that bothered the Native Americans?

Key fob bad medicine...

Fun fact about Indian reservations. They are not self governed territory subject to Indian laws and Indian law enforcement. It is true that police have no authority. No state cops, no county cops have authority there. That is true.

The FBI has complete law enforcement authority there. The FBI handles all major crimes including murder, which is otherwise a state crime.

Source: redacted.

It certainly didn’t help things.

Streetlights go dark more frequently than I would attribute to coincidence as I pass them. Batteries die in my presence. I seriously can’t keep a watch going if it takes a battery, and I’ve tried several watches. The only one I have had success with is a self-winding Omega.

But I haven’t been near a reservation recently, so it ain’t me.

I think that goes with being a Browns fan.

i need to think on this one.

Seriously was the area fairly populated? I'm guess heavy radioactivity traffic.

g-g-g-g-g ghooooosts?

I wonder if someone was cruising parking lots trying to spoof fobs.

There's not a lot of technical information on how each system operates, for obvious reasons, but the general sense is there is a range of radio frequencies that cycle and both the car and fob have to stay in sync with.

Thus if you push keys on your fob out of range too many times [maybe a dozen maybe two], your fob gets out of sync with the cycle sequence of the car and the two need to be re-paired.

Maybe someone thinks they have a gadget that can cycle through enough frequencies fast enough around enough cars, they can snag a 'hit' and sync with a car that isn't theirs.

You used to be able to do something similar much easier with garage door openers, that have much less sophisticated cycling algorithms and much less range of cycled frequencies, particularly if bunches of residences all had the same brand opener. Kids would drive down a residential street pushing their own opener to see if any garages opened.

Maybe someone's getting a little more aggressive with this because both Honda and Tesla have had recent problems with potentially having their fob algorithm hacked.

And maybe whatever they're trying failed to give them assess to your vehicle, but succeeded in throwing your vehicle's cycle schedule off of sync with your fob.

I’m gonna wait until BlackOp weighs in on this one and I’ll vote along with him.

I am no help on the issue, just wanted to up my post count.

Was there a Frenchman riding a bike in the parking lot? I would start there.

They prefer the term fire water. Lucky you didnt get scalped

The Chevy and the Nissan got anti-frisky

This. I also wonder if it wasn't the guy that pulled in next and verbally confirmed with the OP that his key fob wasn't working. I had a rental car stolen recently and was told that they're targets for theft.

They have some type of device that kills the fob.

"I was lucky that the hotel was next door to a grocery store that carried that type of battery."

No regular grocery store carries those batteries. It's a money making scheme.

I like the word fob.

This seems like a question that would be posed to prospective law enforcement types by the govt. It's a mystery wrapped inside an enigma. Not even the people responsible know.

What's a "fob"?

Thieves trying to hack the ISM band.

SKINWALKER RANCH

A little research on Google shows there are devices that can be used to disable your key fobs, making it easier for thieves to break into/steal cars.

Skinwalker Ranch?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinwalker_Ranch

I was kind of wondering this. In fact, that's the reason that I took off the trim piece so I could lock and unlock the door manually. A dead fob meant that I couldn't lock the car, and while I didn't have anything inside it to steal, I wondered if someone was looking to steal the whole car. I initially figured I'd just leave it unlocked since I wasn't sure what to do, but youtube showed me how to get the trim piece off and use the manual key.

You had fire water with them now you need to smoke'm peace pipe.

According to one of the YouTube videos, you can supposedly wrap your key fob in aluminum foil and it will block this from happening. But it seems that the aluminum would also block the signal coming from your key.

Every fob I've had takes a 2032. Same as the Bios on a MoBo.

https://static.grainger.com/rp/s/is/...536&$adapimg$=

You’re doing it wrong. The foil goes on your head.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

But that doesn't invalidate his theory. If both the store and the hotel are owned by the tribe, it would be a clever ploy.

And you nailed the battery type. 2032 was what I needed.

Hmmm
sec

RF jammers have unintended consequence.

It's common knowledge that battery drainage is frequent when there are Bigfoot in the area.

Rain Man tells the best stories.

Have you tried putting the fob in a microwave and determining if the inks in your tattoos affect the functionality and/or start a fire?

Yes, it's a reach, but I have nothing else.... ROFL

I bet Rainman is vaccinated and the biochip in his vaccine is to blame...

:bolt:

That doesn’t explain the nanobots.

I like the curse version.
Easy and understandable

For 95% of human history, curses have been the generally accepted explanation to unexplained phenomena.

Mama said nanobots are da debil

Radio frequency interference.

Because the mendulla allagonza?

[not gonna subject the BB to the Roy Orbison tattoo ;)]

yes that's the correct answer.