Re: Keyless remote ?? (archive)

Ken,
That's interesting. There has been a LOT of discussion on the remotes in PMB's board (much too much to copy here), and it's been fairly well agreed that BMW disabled the IR remotes in the US market because the transmitter had too great a range and they had liability concerns. However, the '91's WERE pre-wired for the IR, but not activated. Possibly a previous owner did the work .

For those of you with early US spec 8's out there, Ken is correct, the IR main unit is in the passenger side kick panel and the receiver in the rear-view mirror. If you open up the kick panel and you just have a wire bundle dangling, no luck. But if you find the IR unit, then chances are you can re-enable it (sorry, I don't know the details). The remotes are expensive, and programming them is "detailed" in the owners manual. One alternative posted was Stellar Electronics, with an inexpensive unit ($89 was quoted in the archives) - 503-693-1918 and talk to DREW as he is familiar with 850 installations.

This issue has been bothering a lot of folks for quite some time, as you can see from this board's archives as well (search under 'remote' and 'keyless'). There's been confusion as BMW changed remote options not only by year, but by geographical area. A lot of folks bought early 8's without working remotes (I was lucky to get 2 working ones), and have had aftermarket alarms installed. Through discussions on the boards, they've been able to get the OEM working again so they now have two (actually three) alarms (the third is the code lock-out in the OBC, but I don't think many of us use it).

If anyone is interested in a copy of my PMB archives on this discussion thread, I can e-mail it to you.

Stan C.
'92 Blue 850iA
Bay Area 8's

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