Jane and John's RV pages
Replacing the entry door keypad
The original Winnebago supplier of the keyless entry system was SCS Fridgette who went into bankruptcy several years ago during the great 'bust' circa 2007; this left Winnebago and owners high and dry for support and parts. Winnabago changed suppliers to TriMark soon after Fridgette disappeared and developed a conversion harness to adapt the TriMark keyless entry electronics module to the old Fridgette wiring harness. (By the way, with some Internet sleuthing, you can still find some Fridgette wireless entry key fobs by searching for the FCC ID number on an old key fob.)
If you are converting from the old Fridgette keyless entry system to the TriMark product and you want to replace the old keypad with the new TriMark keypad, you will need to pull new wire from the TriMark module to the keypad opening.
The job
Many thanks to Walter (Bruce) Kane for this write-up and for the pictures. We started communicating via email a few weeks ago when Bruce discovered these RV project pages and was on essentially on the same upgrade track as we were.
From Bruce:
(Text is above the pictures)
This picture shows the removal of the old keypad. You will need to string the wire harness supplied by Trimark from the pad to the controller. To do this you will need to make a hole in the floor beneath the pad and another on the inside wall of the compartment where the old controller was. The plug ins on either end of the harness would have required at least a 1” hole. By cutting the harness, I was able to use a 3/4” drill which allowed the wires and conduit to pass through. Since the hole beneath the pad is in the wheel well of the front tire, make sure that you secure the wire so that it has no chance of backing out and is waterproof. I still am not sure how the old keypad is secured to the outside of the coach, suffice it to say that you can remove the guts of the pad with a rotozip router. Beneath the numbered pads you will find a circuit board and past that is a plastic case that bridged the entire cutout in the wall of the coach. By the time this plastic box came out I had a hole too large to be able to gain any purchase with a sheet metal type screw.
This is what came out. The plastic box can be seen here. I cut two pieces of fairly thick aluminum stock about 3” square and used these to bridge the gap in the sidewall. Then using 3” stainless machine screws with lock nuts, I was able to secure the pad through these backer pieces.
The hole
Job complete! (note from John - since the new keypad has a smaller footprint than the old Fridgette pad, the easiest way to install the new pad is over the old mounting bezel. This is how Winnebago Factory Service does a retrofit.)
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