2022 Subaru WRX
Key Replacement - Save vs Dealer in San Diego

2022 Subaru WRX Smart Key Replacement - Fast, Affordable & Professional

I was already in the Fletcher Hills area of El Cajon when the call came in, so the timing worked out better than usual.

A guy called from a brewery taproom parking lot just after 3:30 in the afternoon. He worked there, his shift started at 4, and his 2022 WRX was sitting in the lot doing nothing. Push the start button, key-not-detected warning, dead silence. He'd already tried holding the fob to the button, which was the right instinct, and got one brief start out of it before it died again. That told me the fob still had something in it but not much.

I got there with about 25 minutes to spare before his shift. Pulled the fob apart on the hood of my van. CR2032 was the original factory cell and it was reading nearly flat on my tester. Swapped it, seated it clean, and the car recognized the fob immediately.

The part that took the most time was the confirmation walk: cycling through each button, checking that the vehicle was communicating with the fob correctly and holding the pairing, not just seeing it once and dropping it. Everything checked out solid. No programming needed, no module work. Just a dead battery that had gotten bad enough to kill the system but not bad enough to trigger anything permanent.

He was inside and clocked in before 4. The dealer, for context, would have had him towing the car in and waiting for a service appointment. That was not his afternoon.

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