The Sneaker (Eclipse Spyder) came with a keybob remote for the keyless entry when I bought it, but it didn't work. Big deal? Try driving a month without yours!
The weird blue fob on the left is what came with the Sneaker. It didn't work but conveniently made it much easier to find my key in the foyer table drawer (the pop of color didn't hurt). I took it with me to the True Value hardware store when I went to get a spare key made and saw that they are able to test them there. I had the key guy test it and "nope", didn't work. Now, this is why I always go to True Value FIRST: the key guy popped out the old battery and opened up a new one, put it in and tested it again. When it still didn't work, I wasn't charged for the battery. But gotta admit, felt a little weird about that.
So that lead to me looking for a replacement fob. I had driven the car for about 3 weeks without and after having keyless entry (and remote lock) for years...it was quite a slap in the face. This would not stand. I looked on line and found varying prices but in the end found a local guy on craigslist who buys and sells them. I decided to support my local grey market and picked up one from him for $20. I had, just months ago, lost the key and fob to Frank (the Focus Wagon) so I had a little experience in replacing keys and fobs (to the unfortunate tune of $275 w/ towing...ouch). This is why I almost immediately went to make a spare key for the Sneaker. The programming for Frank's keyfob was simply a matter of turning on and off the key and pressing the keyfob in a certain sequence within a given amount of time.
Programming the keyfob for the Spyder was in a way simpler, yet more difficult. In order to program the keyfob (the car's remote receiver actually) one must crawl under the dash and place a "jumper" between pin 1 and pin 4 of the ODB connector, then do the key and keyfob thing. I had misgivings about poking into electronic bits and wasn't emboldened none by the vague "Pin 1 and Pin 4" info given in most of the programming instructions, but a quick Google search yielded a photo of the connector and it's pin numbers so it was time to man up and take care of business. I made the jumper out of a paper clip, stuck it in the connector and held my breath (not listed in the instructions, but it just felt right). Less than two minutes later my $20 craigslist keyfob worked perfectly. On less issue to deal with. Next order of business: Exhaust!
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