Who has a spare 3 button key fob??

My 987.1 came with 1.5 keys. The #2 key is complete but the #1 key is missing the buttons and the circuit board. I found a used one on fleabay but thought I would check here 1st. Next , on to the frunk sill switch and replacing fan and temp switch knobs and I am 100% Until the mod bug bites...

The circuit board has to be coded to your car or the remote lock/unlock functions won't work. That's true of any used or new key. The anti-theft chip has to be moved from the old key to the new key, hopefully the pieces you have that chip is still there. If not - it's new key time.

Welcome to P9, @boatmangc ! Agreed with @deilenberger here. One key thing (pun partially intended) -- From what I can tell per past experience, the specific anti-theft pill (transponder chip) in the key fob absolutely cannot be cloned or reprogrammed in a 987; it is a one-time thing that the dealer has to do. Old transponder pills are absolutely useless. As for the circuit board, I once sold a used key circuit board to someone else (after I sold my previous 987) and I believe they did get it to work. However, they likely had the dealer program it in for them to pair it with their car -- I don't know the details. Again, no dealer will be able to program someone else's used transponder pill. Given that my 987 came with only one key, and new keys are super-expensive, my temporary solution is to just use an AirTag -- so ideally I'll never lose it and will just call it a day. Regardless, your being able to have a key plus a transponder is a great emergency key to tuck away somewhere safe.

I took the guts out of my working key and attached it to the damaged key and all worked. The damaged one has the pill. There are a couple on fleabay one used and one refurbished. I will call the closest Porsche dealer and see what they will charge to program it Vs just buying a new one....

It isn't clear what you did here. You left the pill in the old damaged key? Is there a reason you haven't moved it over to the new key? The "new" key works -- for what? To unlock the car? It should if you moved the circuit board over. An exacto knife around the edges of the immobilizer pill will release it from the old key, then a dab of glue will hold it in the new key body.

I believe the car gets programmed to the pill. On my 987.2 , I had a broken shell and buttons so I bought a used key (complete) on ebay and swapped the guts - without swapping the pill. While it would wirelessly lock/unlock, I couldn't start the car untill I swapped the pill form my old fob. Interestingly, I could get it to work by just holding the pill near the key blade and turning the key. Note that while you can by a new shell on Amazon or ebay, the one I originally bought didn't come with the copper contacts - I guess you were supposed to also swap your old shell's contacts. But mine got mangled while I tried removing them - which is why I bought (for $25 on ebay) a genuine Porsche used fob and swapped my old board and pill.

From my understanding and multiple past experiences, a dealer WILL be able to program a brand new and untouched virgin key from Porsche (blank transponder pill), which can be ordered online. I believe the pills are written to once during the initial programming, and cannot be changed afterwards. (That's why you can't buy a used key on eBay and then try to program your car to reuse that one.) As for used control buttons, those might (?) be coded to your car to work correctly... but not the transponder. I've had the dealer successfully program brand-new 987 spare keys, but they never had luck with older fobs. I did resell on a used fob I had just for the guts (non-transponder), and I think their dealer was able to program the control buttons to his car (his transponder pill was fine). YMMV!

That's kinda what I thought, I will purchase the refurbished one on the 'bay and swap pills and see what happens... Thanks for the info

I bought a complete used fob from an online company who had several different makes available. When I took it to the steelership in Omaha, they said a fob can only be programmed once. My bullshit flag went off and I figured they just want me to buy a new one. I had no choice, but to buy one from them

The dealer wasn't lying to you. They can't make the used key work with your vehicle. The immobilizer (anti-theft, not the alarm system) will only activate the car when it reads a passive RFDI chip that's embedded inside the key. Those chips can only be written to once, and that's done by Porsche based on your VIN#, with code gotten from Germany. The alarm system is part of the remote control functions, and that is also coded to the car, but the other way around - that you can teach the car to accept a different alarm key code, even from a used key. So the best the dealer could have done for you was program the key to disable the alarm and make the buttons on the key work with the car. What wouldn't work is - you still wouldn't be able to start the vehicle. That said, there are RFID clone devices that can read the existing lump in a working key and write it to a blank lump that will unlock the immobilizer and let the car run. There is also a hack (perhaps started in Russia) where the immobilizer is opened up and the code is read in hex from the coded/burned code in the immobilizer, then burned to a blank chip. There was a guy I stumbled across advertising that service here in the US, but he was doing it out of a basement apartment in a not-very-desirable section of northern NJ.