Saved by a digital washing machine

Clean, fresh-smelling and germ-free
Clean, fresh-smelling and germ-free

Want to know one of the pitfalls of a car with “keyless drive” — the amazingly cool technology that lets you simply walk up to the car, open it, climb in, start it and drive away?

You are certain to completely forget about the remote, leaving it in the clothes you last wore or in the briefcase or wallet you last used.

And while I don’t mind admitting I’m domestic enough to do my own laundry, I can assure you I’m not about to start rummaging through my pockets before I throw the clothes in my digital, high-efficiency, front-loading washing machine.

So you might think I’ve suffered two blows from discovering that I’d washed my “personal car communicator” (PCC) from Tricia’s Volvo. The smugness of her “I told you sos!” and a $200 loss to have the dealer replace and reprogram a PCC.

But Whirlpool saved my butt.

I let the remote dry for 24 hours — and it worked perfectly. I’ve often heard that being patient — not trying to complete a connection while there’s excess moisture on a PC board — and letting the unit air dry completely would restore it. (I often hear this about keyboards people spill stuff into. There are even nut cases who deliberately clean PC keyboards in dishwashers.) Turns out the big temptation is to try the unit too soon.

More practically, the remote was inside a pants pocket that I washed in a small load of clothes in cold water in that Whirpool high-efficiency washing machine. Like most things in my life these days, this thing is heavily digital. To minimize resources, it dynamically matches the amount of water to the load size.

Based on this, I suspect the remote may not have been completely submerged for long periods during the wash/rinse cycles. Hey, you gotta have a theory — this is mine and I’m stickin’ to it.

Anyway, my remote is not only functioning perfectly — I’ll bet it’s also significantly cleaner, brighter and fresher-smelling than yours.


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2 responses to “Saved by a digital washing machine”

  1. […] just before we parted ways today. David was telling me that he’d read my post about washing a Volvo car remote. “Ah, you saw that,” I said. “Shocking that it could dry out and still […]

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