Extend the range of your Boxster key remote control

This is a repost of a post I originally made in 2005. Enjoy.

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I managed to extend the range of my 1999 Boxster remote (actually the key head is a Carrera GT key head but that doesn't make any difference) from 15 feet to 62 feet. And it was easy to do.

Measuring the range:

I opened the driver's door. I did this because when you press the remote button with the driver's door open it beeps immediately and the "immediate" part sped up the process.

With the top down, I stood behind the left side of the car. I walked out to where I thought was about the limit and pressed the button. If it worked, I stepped back. If it didn't, I stepped forward. I always waited for 15 seconds between tries to make sure there wasn't a temporary battery drain to skew my results.

I always held the remote at waist height while testing it.

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The fix:

First I removed the driver's side sun visor. This involved one screw on the right:



And two screws on the left:



That left an exposed gap:



I gently pulled on the trim piece:



It came out about this far:



Then I realized that it was being held in by a clip. This picture is a picture of the clip after I removed the trim piece since I couldn't get the camera in there while the trim piece was in:



So I pushed the clip towards the left a little bit while pulling up gently on the trim piece. It came right out. Here's a picture of the wiring harness I am going to be working with:



I unwrapped most of the foam wrapping from the wiring harness. It kind of "ripped" apart. It wasn't really ripping but the foam was separating. No big deal.



This is what it looked like after pushing the hanging foam out of the way. Note the white wire, which is the antenna for the remote control.



I pulled the white antenna wire out from the pieces of tape holding it in. Note that there is almost no exposed wire (the insulation goes almost to the end, save 2 mm):



With the antenna wire separated from the harness, measured the range of the remote. I kept backing up to measure and it kept working. I had to go halfway into my neighbor's yard before it stopped working. I was 62 feet from the back of the car and it still worked! At 64 feet, it didn't work.

So I measured off 130 mm -- according to the Boxster TSB #9662 "Insufficient Range of Remote Control":



I then wrapped the foam covering back around the wiring harness, leaving the measured 130 mm of antenna wire sticking out:



I put it all back together (no problems there), and the range is still 62'.

Note that I didn't follow the TSB instructions exactly. They tell you to cut and strip the wire. I also didn't add 130 mm of bare wire to the end as was advised on this board the other day. The range was good enough as far as I was concerned. If I find myself dissatisfied with it or I'm feeling adventurous I will try that later since it is totally reversible.