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The Alarm from Hell
The night I picked up the car, the
boyfriend warned me that the alarm sometimes went off, and I would need
to close the drivers side door, put the key in, lock the door and then
unlock it. He wasn't kidding. In the first week that I owned
the car, I think I set off the alarm like 20 times. I live in a
condominium complex, and I leave for work at 6:45 in the morning.
Setting off that alarm four out of five mornings every week at that time
isn't something that was going to go over well for very long, so fixing
the problem became a priority.
The first thing I tried was the simple solution, cut the wire
going to the siren. Ten minutes later, I set the alarm off again,
and realized that it wasn't the siren that was sounding, it was the
car's horns. I did some digging around on the internet, and found
out that the car has a factory anti theft system in it, and that was
what was going off.
I did some more digging, and found a message forum with
instructions for fixing the problem. The instructions suggested
finding the black and green wire with silver dots at the anti theft
module under the dash, splicing into it, and grounding it. I gave
it a try. It didn't work, well it didn't work because the wire I
grounded was in the wrong harness, going to the time control unit, which
is right behind the anti theft module. I removed my ground, but
afterwards the remote start wasn't working. I figured I had
screwed up the time control unit by grounding it, so I got on ebay, and
found a used one for sale. I plunked down $30, and bought it.
About ten minutes after I bought it, I thought about the ground
connection that I had removed to hook up my ground. It turns out
there were two wires in a crimp on terminal. One of the wires had
broken off all together, and the other wire was hanging on by one
strand. I repaired the ground connection, and low and behold, the
remote starter worked fine. I then pulled the wiring connector out
of the anti theft module, and the alarm problems were solved as well.
I'm now waiting for the time control unit to arrive so I can put it on
ebay and try to get some money back out of it. |