Relays and vexxing garage door remote range issue

Hoping to glean some insights from any of you who have experienced and solved handheld garage door opener remote range issues after applying a relay to overhead garage opener terminals.

Background: I have an ESP32 doing a number of things in our garage, but one of the primary functions is to control the garage door via a relay connected to the opener connection terminals at the rear of the overhead opener. Everything is fine, and this works very well - the relay will activate the door as intended, and the button on the wall also activates the door just fine.

The problem is when the wiring for the relay is connected the handheld remote range is horrible; you can hardly open the door sitting outside the garage with the remote door opener.

I am certain it is the ESP32, too, via process of elimination of everything else running in the garage.

To try to cure any RF noise issues, or boost reception, I have:

  1. Removed original whip antenna and soldered coax to the overhead opener’s antenna terminal and ran it to the exterior of the garage where the now exposed copper is the same length of the original antenna. Verified continuity. Also grounded coax’s shielding to the overhead garage opener’s metal frame.

  2. Used ferrite cores on every wire going into the overhead opener (power, obstruction sensors, wall button, relay wires) to try to fend off rf noise. Multiple windings around each core.

  3. Went from a standard coil/mechanical relay to an opto-isolated relay in hopes that might help. Nope.

So - any suggestions?

If you’ve done something similar are you also experiencing range issues?

The only thing I can think of trying now is moving the relay closer to the terminals to try to cut down on the wires “acting as antennas” for rf noise; currently the relay is sitting in a junction box about 20’ away.