Car won't start, red "no key" icon

[95maxrider]

My 2011 FX50 decided to stop recognizing the key fob after I drove home from the store, and I'm getting the red "no key" icon when I get in and try to start the car. Installing a new battery in the fob didn't help, and I can still lock/unlock the car from a good distance, so that part of the remote seems to be working fine. Seems like the most likely culprit is the electronic steering lock module, but I'm not sure if the symptoms actually point in that direction. I tried tapping it with a hammer but no luck.

Notes: The steering wheel is locked when I get in the car, and it unlocks when I put the car in On/Acc mode. To me, this sounds like the lock module is working correctly.

Can I just swap in a different steering lock module, or does it require reprogramming? If it requires programming, I wonder if I can just swap the motherboard from mine to a working unit to avoid programming?

Or does this sound more like the intelligent key module or BCM is going bad? When I put the fob in its holster in the dash, it doesn't light up like I think it used to do.

When I lock the car the red "no key" light flashes again. I do not have a second fob to test with.

 

[SCY7H3]

From what I recall the steering wheel is always locked until you put the car in On/Acc mode just as you said. I don't think that's the issue. Have you tried putting the fob into that spot just below the side mirror control button. I forget what it's called but it's where you place the fob when you run into these types of issues. Also have you tried your other key fob? See if the issue is specific to the one key fob or both.

Doing a bit of searching it appears to be an issue that Nissan/Infiniti owners come across and two ways to go about it. One is to replace the ESCL(steering lock module) or bypassing it by tapping it with a hammer then removing a fuse and clearing the fault so it doesn't come back. Here's the thread. QX70 09-17 - ESCL Falure

 

[95maxrider]

Welp, problem solved, but I'm confused as to how it happened.

As I said in the first post, I had just come home from driving the car around and parked it. A few minutes later I had to move it, but it wouldn't start. So my mind goes to electronic problems, since that's been a problem with this FX in the past. Well, I checked all the fuses, even pulled the fuse for the steering column lock, and I was still just getting a click when it tried to start. So I started thinking the starter died. But I decided to check the battery and it was at 12.0 volts. A few hours of charging it up and it started on the 2nd or 3rd attempt! The battery is an Optima Red Top and is only a year old, so I just wasn't thinking about it in the troubleshooting process.

How can a battery be so low after just driving the car? I read/heard something about these cars having some dumb alternator charging method, can anyone explain that a little better to me?

Anyways, now that I pulled the fuse for the steering column lock, at least I can eliminate that from future consideration if/when there are more starting problems.