Well, sorry about the tease, but I'm just wondering why none of the electrical gurus here have reverse engineered or made one from another vehicle work for our c4s.

What would it take??

Thanks
Sam

 

Your car already has PKE.

 

Yes sir. I know that...and to get another key fob is expensive.

Just wondering why no one has hacked one of the other car's remotes to work with our vettes...

What controls these things? Is it in the pcm ecm ccm or is there some other "xcm" black box?

I wouldn't know where to start....any ideas?

sam

 

Sorry about that!
The PKE is it's own small plastic box mounted behind the D.I.C. in the dash. You need to remove the dash top to get to it. I bought one from the dealer when I first bought my 93, $350.00. It turned out that someone had hacked in and then removed an aftermarket alarm. Mine works fine, some complain about it.

 

The PKE system has many fingers that touch many aspects of the cars electronics. It interfaces with the CCM, DIP (drivers information panel), door locks, hatch release, anti-theft, antenna, ignition switch key assembly, and a bit more.

To incorporate something else into the car, its like fitting a square peg in a round hole. I sure some functions will be lost due to incompatibility. I like the PKE system operation and would rather put my time into making it work correctly rather than jam another kind of unit in there and loose some of the functionality.

You can check Ebay from time to time, you can probably pick a FOB up for around $70 or so. That might ease your pain some. I ended up buying 2 and keeping one as a spare.

 

I think he means why not use another GM car FOB, like a Camaro. The reason is that each car has it own set of frequencies. And you cannot change the frequencies on the FOB.

 

I'm sure something could be cooked up custom-style, but then look at the price. A $100 PKE FOB is pretty cheap when compared to trying something like that.

Another option is to just go to an after market alarm entirely. You get much better security as well as whatever sort of FOB you want.

 

The problem is not really with the guts of the fob (representing the real value and cost) but with the lousy easily breakable plastic case that must actually cost about $0.20 to make. I have a couple of fobs where the innards are just fine but the case broke/cracked etc.

If some clever fabricator out there could come up with a decent replacement case for $10 or even $20 (hopefully less), I'm sure there would be some C4 owners lining up to buy.

Doug

 

Well, I should have posted this in the naysayers forum.

Hey, with all the money you guys have, why do we even need a tech forum. Go buy everything new or have the dealership put it in.

Soon these keyfobs will be a couple hundred dollars,, but who cares, it's only money. I haven't had one for years now....I'll be dammmd if I am gonna pay 100+ for something like that. I would pay 100 dollars though if someone had a fix, and I was contributing to the overall r and d...that's different. But just to buy one for 100+ and drive up the price is just ridiculous. IMHO.

Randy93 yes, brother...that's exactly what I am talking about. or more ideas like it. I don't want to lose functionality...Would an after market one lose something??

Pcolt put a little tech in his answer.. Anybody got anything else??


Why hasn't anyone tackled this? It doesn't seem like it would be a big deal for an engineering student...am I wrong?

What happened to all the ingenuity?

Did I post this in the General Discussion forum? I want TECH. Now, give it to me straight! I'm tired of opinion really...seriously.

I want answers

I want the truth.

Now let's start fresh.....beginning with TECH.

 

When my PKE unit was out of the car I had no dash lights. All power door lock and hatch(on Coupe) wiring goes through the PKE receiver. I do not know why the frequency of another remote cannot be changed to match the Vette's receiver? Or should I say: anything is possible, all it takes is money.
Personally mine works fine, but I drive my Vette about 2,000 miles a year and the key fob sits on my dresser most of the time so it has not been damaged yet?

 

The expense in re-engineering something is high whether or not it is technically possible. And also, GM has propriety parts and circuitry in all their electronics. Meaning that the IC circuits and such have coded marking on them so you can’t figure out what the component is or cross reference it. Only GM and the manufacture has that code and they won’t release them. Also documentation, schematics, principal of operation is not available from GM (it’s a secret ). If that is not enough, I have talked to one chip company and they did not even have the info due to the age of the parts.

And yes, I would buy the FOB plastic case in a hart beat.



I don’t understand why you had the dash light problem. None of that circuitry goes thru the PKE at all. I have had mine out also and it will disable the door locks.



PKE - Passive Keyless Entry. This means that when you get the FOB into a close or distant proximity of the receiver, it activates.

The FOB is not like other remotes where you press a button to open the door. And its not just a frequency that makes it all work. It is a digital code which is the personality of each FOB that the receiver recognizes. The receiver can remember up to three different FOBs each with a different digital code.

There is also a constant “chatter or communication” between the receiver and the FOB. The receiver is always checking to see where the FOB is and how to react. This type of FOB or remote is very unique and matches the firmware (electronics) in the PKE receiver with frequency and digital codes.

You can’t just go out and find a different & cheaper FOB unit to work in place of the original. They are specifically tailored to work with that PKE receiver. If there is a cheaper and better way to replace some of the electronics in these cars, I will be right in line also.

 

Sorry, let me explain. When the PKE receiver was out I had no Speedo lights. The mileage would not show up, no speedometer functions lit up.

 

I wish I had some words of wisdom here, but I got nothing. None of that stuff has anything to do with the PKE. From what I remember, those items are CCM driven. Possibly when the dash pad was removed or something like that jarred or moved a loose ground or connector somewhere. ……just a guess thought.

 

I recall that the first time my plastic case broke, I went through the exercise of tracking down the manufacturer (Lectron) to see if there was some place just to buy the lousy case--no luck. You would have thought that the manufacturer would have figured a way to maybe spend $0.25 instead of $0.20 for a case that was robust enough to house the expensive innards. Doesn't anyone out there know some injection molding provider that can come up with a replacement case??

Doug