This remote kept bothering me. And while I concluded that programming it was indeed impossible, I still kept thinking how to make it work with the USDM fob. The solution turned out to be quite a hack, so a full disclaimer is in order: PCB boards suffered during the process, those of you with a delicate, electronic heart, are encouraged to skip this post.

Just as the saying in the title goes, I was determined to fit the original key’s PCB into the American one, no matter what. The first obstacle was the switches, which were permanently soldered to the board. I came to the conclusion that this was too small of a component for my skills (because although I do have a soldering iron and I’m not afraid to use it, there have to be limits), so I begged a technician at Lispol to do it for me. Big thanks to this guy - no one in Kraków wanted to take on the task, and I went to many a places, but he did and even called me to consult the length of the wires.

Microswitches were nicely extended, ready for further hacking, with micro-soldering done nicely.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the switches from the board were too small for the new housing and couldn’t be pressed properly. So, I had to buy a set of slightly larger ones:

And glued them into a base to maintain the switch alignment with the remote:

Since there was so little space, I had to do away with the battery holder (yes, oh horrors! I did solder the wires directly onto it). There was still not enough space, so I had to grab the Dremel - a bit of grinding has never harmed anyone.

At this point, all that was left was to grind down the guides on the back of the remote:

And then assemble everything back into one piece.

The moment everyone was waiting for: does it work?

It sure does!

• Impreza
• Gd
• Sti