Factory keyless entry on the L model? Yes!

[Dodge Aries K]

First, here's a video proving it works. Put your money where your mouth is, right?

In my quest to make my L not a basic model I've already done some various things to it including adding power mirrors (prewired), making the driver window have auto up functionality, added cruise control (also prewired), and (when I purchased it) had the side moldings and rear spoiler added. Not having keyless entry pissed me off but I figured I could have it added aftermarket for not much money. However, the idea of some random idiot cutting up wires on my new car made me uneasy so I never had it done. But after I hooked up the techstream to change some setting on the car I noticed there were setting to change how the keyless entry functioned. Well, when I told it to add a remote it would error out.

Started researching information and found that the tire pressure monitor box was also the keyless entry receiver on vehicles so equipped. Looked at the wiring diagram and it was basically power and data lines going to the box so I started wondering more and more about it. Toyota dealer was helpful in my research, they gave me a part number and we found out that the 2012-1018 Yaris hatchbacks with keyless entry share the same part.

As luck had it, a wrecked 2013 LE showed up in a junkyard not too far away. Went on a rainy day so the guy there let me get a bunch of junk for next to nothing. Brought home the box (which is mounted on the driver side rear pillar under the gray trim, totally a horrible thing to remove) and finally got to installing it. I also had a new key with the built in remote like the factory keyless cars had sitting here that I figured I could use to make it work. Well, sure enough, I was able to carefully sneak that box out without pulling the entire rear interior apart, plugged the new one in, and programmed the remote. Viola! Factory keyless entry installed, working perfectly, and no idiot cutting my dash harness.

The only issue I ran into is that my China deluxe mini vci cable is not able to write data to a lot of things so I will need to either buy a better one or have a dealer/someone with a good scan tool reprogram my TPMS data into the box since it remembers the data from the car it was removed from. But since the car is sitting in the garage until winter goes away, it'll be a while before that gets done. I made sure to take a picture of the computer screen so I had the TPMS data before changing out the box so that way it will be a piece of cake for someone to reprogram without having to pull off the tires to look at the codes on the sensors.

Tomorrow I'll check and see if my wife's 2012 L base model (roll up windows but power locks are standard on them) has the options for the keyless entry. If it does, I'd be willing to bet it would be the same procedure to add factory keyless entry to it as well.

Just wanted to share my findings... shame on Toyota for just not including a bunch of these "options" on the base model car especially since us Americans get shafted on features as it is especially if you want to shift yourself. Up next on the will it work thing is going to be the steering wheel mounted audio controls but I have to buy a new clockspring, airbag, and the audio controls themselves to see if that works.