If it's the battery holder that has broken loose at one of the three solder joints they can be resoldered. We have two remotes, and both of them have had the battery holder come loose, and were fixed easily with just resoldering the contacts. However, one remote is very reluctant to unlock the door and requires several hard key presses. The contacts on the board have been cleaned several times with a q-tip and alcohol without too much success.

As it is obviously toast, I am going to try a couple of fixes:
1) coat the carbon button with a couple layers of the conductive paint used to repair the heater elements in rear windows
2) if that doesn't work, I'm going to shave off a carbon button on an old remote, and glue it to the current carbon button (crazy glue or gorilla glue might work)

Will post the results whenever I get around to the mods. LOL

 

Did you buy a new or used Fob off of e-bay and was it a Chevy HHR fob

 

You did not explicitly say that you replaced the battery, I assume you did? I did find that my solder repairs are not always as good as I think, a few times I had to go back and flux both sides of the board. But then you can do more damage than you think with a soldering iron, I am sure that you have also looked for flux and lead spills on the board?

 

Brand new and for HHR.
I made sure that the GM part number matched the one fob that came with the MB.
Mike

 

How far are you into your warranty? Some have had it fully covered under warranty.

 

My 08 is still in warranty, fob went bad, saved me 135 bucks

 

As long as your '08 HHR has less than 36,000 miles you're due a free fob from GM.Don't waste your time and money on something from ebay if you don't have to do that.

 

That's great if you didn't buy it used from a Ford dealer like I did and it only came with one key and one fob.
After making the down payment I didn't have spare cash to give away the difference in price to a dealer. So I went to e-bay for both. They both work perfectly so I don't think I wasted my time or money.

 

Yup, the battery has been replaced, even swapped with the other remote - and the solder repairs are good. And no flux or lead spills. I have done a lot of electronic soldering over the years so it's kinda routine to do a double check once the work is done. The problem right now is just with the one button - the Unlock one, and that is a pain. The board has been gone over looking for cracked traces, other loose components etc. and to top it off, the carbon contact is looking pretty worn and ragged. So will see if it can be repaired. the final alternative will be to install a momentary contact switch on the outside of the case