2006 Camry LE Keyless Entry Problems

[toyodude]

After owning this car for over three years, recently our keyless entry and lock system seems to be doing some strange intermittent behavior lately.

Here's the problem:

1. When using the keyless entry remote to open all doors the system works fine. I start the car, put the car in reverse to back out of the garage and all doors lock (programmed that way). While the car is running I press the unlock button and only the drivers door unlocks. I can hear the switches (solenoids?) activating on the other locks but they do not open. I turn the car off, restart and nothing changes.

2. Locking the car with the keyless remote works fine. Intermittently, using the remote I can only unlock the drivers side door. When I press the button again on the remote I hear the other door switches activate but they don't unlock the other doors.

Here is what I checked:
-Car battery. Working (according to the green eye)
-Keyless Entry batteries (replaced with new batteries, this did not change anything)
-No radio towers are in our neighborhood so I can't blame it on that.

I'm hoping someone out there might have a simple answer. BTW this system was installed by the dealer a few weeks after the car was sold to me over three years ago. This is a Toyota alarm system.

Thanks so much for any help.

[workerant]

how about just do it without the remote.. don't even start the car, just try lock and unlock from the door pannel. Does it work all the time?

[toyodude]

The door panel behaves the same way when the locks act up. I'm just really baffled by this issue. I keep thinking that it might be the car battery. When I owned Nissans and the car battery would go, the power locks would act erratically. Even though my battery indicates it as working in the Camry, is it possible the indicator might be showing me a false positive on the condition? The connections have no corrosion and it's very clean on the outside. Water levels are normal in all cells. This is the original battery. In all the cars I've owned, I've had to replace the battery around three years.

[gdanaher]

Obviously the problem is not the remote control if the switches give you the same result, do go on from there. If the problem is occurring only when the engine is off, then the battery is suspect. If this happens when the engine is running and presumably the alternator is working, then the battery is not suspect. Get yourself a cheap volt meter and cut out a lot of guesswork, If you are hearing the other solenoids work but the doors don't actually unlock, then it sounds like a mechanical problem at each door and this is very unlikely to have happened to all three doors at the same time. Could you be hearing the solenoid on the one door that works and not really the others??