bad bcm or electrical short?

[Ron Fleming]

hey eric, searched your forums for bcm posts and watched a bunch of your vids and no questions like mine so here goes (long time fan of your youtube vids btw)…

i have a 2001 neon with increasingly bad electical problems related solely to the bcm. for a few years and very occasionally when i used the keyless to unlock the car the horn would sound and it would lock instead of unlock. aside from that very occasional problem, the keyless system worked perfectly.

about a year ago it started happening more often. also, i would notice that sometimes my trunk would unlock by itself when it was parked overnight. also, the keyless just wouldnt work at all sometimes. for security i disconnected the electric trunk unlock at the trunk latch and just used the emergency pull to open the trunk (ghetto as hell… i know).

now, the keyless barely works ever so i have to lock and unlock it with the key, sometimes when i unlock the car with the key the car acts like the battery is dead until i insert the key in the ignition (at which point the car fully comes back to life, battery fully ok, everything normal), sometimes when i unlock the car with the key and open the door the alarm sounds until i insert the key into the ignition, sometimes when the car is sitting the horn sounds a short beep by itself like its supposed to when the car is locked via the keyfob, and recently the horn stopped working completely but then started working again a couple weeks later.

other than that the car has no electrical problems at all. all lights work perfectly, instrument panel works perfectly, no battery drain issues, nothing.

i thought it was a bad rke module and stopped at a local shop to ask the mechanics if they could program a new rke or if i had to take it to the dealership. they told me i could just swap the rke and use the method in the owners manual to re-program the old fobs to the new rke (rke’s are easily swappable) but…
in like 10 years they’ve never had to replace a rke and that it was probably a short somewhere.

my questions are:

1. what is your opinion, short or deteriorating rke?
2. are rke’s really swappable without dealer re-programming?

thanks in advance man, any help would be greatly appreciated!

Topic

[college man]

I don’t think its the bcm this usually is lights not lock function.
see if you can reprogram the remote.see if these links help.

http://blog.keylessentryremotefob.com/2014/03/2001-dodge-neon-key-fob-remote.html

http://www.justanswer.com/dodge/1auci-just-new-battery-installed-2003-dodge.html

http://www.justanswer.com/dodge/1bzdv-keyless-entry-control-box-2001-dodge.html

[Ron Fleming]

hey college man,

thanks for your reply but none of these links work. they are all outdated/invalid/lead to a blank page.

what do you mean its the lights? what lights? i’ve never had any problems with any of my lights or lighting systems. the problems i am having have never been related to my lighting systems at all.

please explain further.

thanks!

[Bill]

The links college man posted work perfectly. Don’t know what you’re trying to open them with but if it’s a computer you should start by updating your browser etc.

[Ron Fleming]

my bad, you are correct. i tried them 3 times each 10 minutes ago and it brought me to the pages but with error msgs, now they work. go figure. its just like my car.

[Bill]

LoL…….I hear ya.

[James O’Hara]

I have to ask if you have replaced the battery in your fob recently. If not do so and also while in the fob make sure everything is lined up right for the buttons. Also with it slowly getting worse I would check the grounds also before going to pulling the dash or chasing after modules. This normally does not take very long and is normally no wheres near as labor intensive as pulling the dash as the one above website states. That is just my 2 cents on it. Though if it was a ground normally you would be having other issues as well.

[Ron Fleming]

yup, tried new batteries. opened the fob, dusted it, inspected it. all good. havent tried tracing the grounds though. but with a faulty ground would the symptoms slowly get worse or would the symptoms just appear and reappear but remain pretty consistent in severity? you know what i mean?

[Author]

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