BMW 3-Series Key Fob Battery Remote Replacement E36, E46, E90, F30, F31, F34 (1990 – 2019) including Diamond Key

Okay. So in this video, we're going to show you how to replace the key remote. The key Fob for the BMW 3- Series. This is for models 2013 to about present day. So this includes models like 316i, 318i, 320i, et c.

I'll use this trapezoid style key Fob. So, this is a really easy one to change the battery on. So if you get a low battery warning, flip this over and press here to remove the internal key. And on the side that the key did not come out of, you'll see there's a hole. Insert that in there and you can go in a little bit and then kind of pop it up towards you and that'll pop off.

This back in. Once you have this back- off, you can see the point right there. When you insert the key, you can see the slot where it allows you to pop it up. And there you can get access to the internal battery. Now, to get that out, you can use something like a Phillips flathead.

Excuse me, screwdriver. Pop that key battery out and you can see this is a CR 24 50 battery. Easy to get on Amazon. Pop that out and get a new one. Pop that in.

Just make sure that the sides with the words is facing towards you. And then put the cap, the backing back on. Just kind of pops back into place here like so. And then you are all set. And so that's how you change the BMW 3- Series for 2013 models and newer, using the trapezoid style key.

And yeah, really all you need is flat head screwdriver. You can even use just pair nail Clippers. There you go.

Alright. In this video, I'm going to show you how to replace the key Fob battery in your BMW 3- Series. This is for the E 90 model of the 3- series and this key Fob was used from 2006 to 2012. And like the 316i, the 330i, 328i, for example, of all the different models that use this key Fob. Now one thing you need to determine first is if you have a Comfort Access Key for the 3- series or non Comfort Access.

Comfort Access means you can unlock the vehicle just by grabbing the handle. You can start the car sometimes with a push button versus having to physically insert a key. You don't have to press this unlock button. Like I said, you can just grab the handle to determine if you have a Comfort Access Key or not. Look at the back of your key and see if there's a square outline like this.

If you have this, this means it's a Comfort Access Key and it has a non rechargeable replaceable battery. Then I'm going to show you how to replace. Now it's really quite simple. If you have a non Comfort Access key, it requires a bit more work to get access to the battery and then it requires some soldering. So we'll do that in another video.

But for the BMW E 90, if you have the Comfort Access, just to press the valet key here, pop that out. And this will give you access to a little slot right here that you can use to pop off this backing. So just get a small flat head screwdriver or even a pair of nail Clippers would work and just kind of right in the middle here, there's a little slot gives you access to be able to leverage and kind of pry that back off. That'll pop right off and give you access to the replaceable CR 2032 battery that you'll need for your 3- series. If you have a Fob from this year range from 2006 to 2012, just pop that off, put in a new one.

It's against the CR 2032 and make sure the positive side is up should be facing you and the positive side has the text on the back of it and they just pop this back on. Snaps right in, valet key back in. And that's how you replace the battery on a 3- series if you have a model 20 06, 20. 07, 20. 08

2009, 2010, 2012 and 2011.

Alright. In this video, I'm going to show you how to replace the battery in this BMW diamond key that was used in the E46. This is for the 3- series from 1998 to 2005. BMW cars. So this is a fairly complex change, but I'm going to get right into it here.

So the first thing you need to do on this key is you need to separate it into two halves. So you'll notice around the edge here, there's kind of a line that separates this key Fob into two pieces . What you're first going to do is take a box cutter and score all the way around, cutting through and actually breaking through the plastic all the way around this key. And this may take some time.

This may take five minutes. This could take ten minutes. If you want to kind of do it carefully, try to keep the key as intact as possible. But the best key that I found to get some leverage was right here at the top. You can eventually cut through and then you can see the box cutter even going through there to start to get some separation between these two pieces.

So once you score all the way around, you'll be able to separate these two pieces here and get access to the circuit board and the battery that we'll need to replace. Now, the battery that you need here is a VL 2020. This is a rechargeable battery. Normally, when the key is in the ignition, this battery charges. But for whatever reason, if it dies and you need to replace it, this is what we're going to show you how to do.

So inside this part of the Fob here, there's a circuit board that you can remove. You can see there's kind of two points that connects here and you can just probably kind of tap it out like so you can't tap it out, maybe some small tweezers here, get that circuit board very delicately pull that out. Okay. So the circuit board here is what we're going to be working on. The key here is this battery that we want to replace.

There's two points that's attached to the board here. You can see these two points of solder here and here. These are called the legs of the battery. And these are where the battery actually attaches to the board. So to replace this battery, we need to get these desolder.

And then when we buy replacement, make sure that you buy one that has legs that are offset 90 degrees here and here, not that's offset 180 degrees, because then it won't match up with your circuit board. So I've got a soldering iron here and a little soldering vacuum. And what I'm going to do is just desolder these points here. And I just got this soldering iron for $19 on Amazon. And if you've never soldered anything before, don't worry.

This is actually not a bad little spot. To learn because there's not a whole lot you can screw up too much here. So what I'm just doing here is melting the solder and then suck it up. And I'm just going to melt some more here. Just decent amount and suck it up.

Okay. So we've got quite a bit removed there on that one. I'm going to do this other point here and see where we're at that's melted down nicely. A little more off here.

Okay.

So you can see all this solder that we've gotten off of here. And now this should allow us to easily pull off the VL 2020 rechargeable battery here from the circuit board. So let's see how we did. Excellent. Okay, so we've still got a little bit of solder there that we need to go.

So actually, this time I'm just going to melt it and see if I can let it drop through. There we go. Perfect. So, yeah, sometimes you can just have to suck it all away, but just melt it out. And there we've got the leg of the battery out on this one.

The second leg disappeared over the years. But that's okay. I think we'll still be able to attach it here, especially since we have a new battery. So new battery. Make sure that we've got leg here and a leg over here.

This one only has one. If you only have one, then work with what you got. So we're going to resolder this now. Attaching the battery there.

And the second point, the leg would actually go right in here. So I don't have a new battery. But we'd take the new one, make sure that the legs get in through those two points there.

I'm going to actually clear off some of this solder here to make a little more room here and get the legs in through there.

And then we are going to resolder once we have this actually attached here.

Okay. Then we'll take a little bit of solder and just solder on these points here.

Okay. And then the other leg over here like so. Okay, so now we've resoldered the new battery onto the board here and then we'll go ahead and just replace this back into its correct spot. Make sure the buttons here are going to the button side here. So flip this over and make sure that aligns back in there correctly.

All right. Snaps right in and then I'd apply some super glue here around the edges and then put the battery back together or the Fob back together. And if you superglue that, then you have a brand new working key Fob with a new VL 2020 battery on your 3- series for the E46.