My experience installing an ebay keyless entry kit
There's been a lot of talk around here lately about the kits offered by BMWAlarm.com. I bought one, and here's my (brief) story.
Rather than installing it myself, as I'd planned, I paid an installer to do it for me. I was just too lazy. FWIW, he told me the instructions that came with the kit were all wrong, and that it was a good thing he knew his stuff or it wouldn't have worked.
My kit, BTW, does not include an alarm. It's just keyless entry, and it came with two flip-style keyfobs:
The kit works great. The doors and trunk all lock and unlock as you'd expect, and the parking lights flash accordingly to confirm your button presses. Sometimes the system gets a little confused and the functions of the buttons can get transposed. That wouldn't happen with an OE system, but it's never very difficult to sort out. It happens generally when I press one or more buttons in quick succession, which there's no need to do anyway.
The keyfobs look great, but they feel a little cheap. Someone familliar with BMW quality will spot them as fakes, but they otherwise do the job well. The BMW logo on them, in particular, could never have come from BMW -- the roundel logo is printed off-center (that's a flaw, not a feature) and isn't raised. It's just a cheap sticker.
Not much else to tell. The product does everything as advertised, for the most part. I haven't had the flip key cut yet, but I have found a locksmith that will do it for CDN$50.
Questions?
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