i got woken up at 4:00am this morning cuz my alarm started to go off. i didnt hear it but my neighbor did and she was banging on my door...lol. said she heard someone out there. nothing was stolen and the doors were still locked. there was no sign of any kind of an attempted entry.


what makes the alarm go off?

 

I was wondering the same thing... it happened one day when i tried to open the door with the window down.. i told my gf and she wanted to see it but i couldnt get it to go off again... weird.

 

mine just goes off on its own for no reason. usually on cold nights. it started when i had my driver's side door replaced after it got hit.

 

If the alarm is activated, it goes off when you try to open the inner door handle, pop the hatch, or the hood. Thats all Ive found out so far.

 

Mine is weird..It only goes off if I try to unlock the passenger side door from the outside..And the alarm will only stop going off after I go to the driver side and unlock that from the outside..

 

Mine has went off like this too. When I fixed my door handle i saw the key cylinder switch was corroded. One of the two doors must be unlocked via the door key to disable the alarm. The hatch key will temporarily bypass the hatch alarm switch.

I think I read that it wont arm when you lock it if the hood is open. So maybe cutting or grounding the hood switch will disable it?

 

Hah, I'm surprised anyone even heard, much less got woken up by the pathetic beeping of the factory horns ;P

I just disabled my alarm by disconnecting and jumpering the hood open switch. The alarm was going off sometimes after I unlocked the car from the driver's side... Annoying and embarrassing. It's bad enough that I can't unlock my own car from that side on a hot day and have to go through the passenger side without having the alarm go off on me to boot!

 

Why can't you open the car from the drivers side?

 

I should clarify, on hot days I cannot *unlock* the car from the driver's side. It appears as if the internal plastic lock mechanism binds up in the heat (probably due to thermal expansion of the material) and even turning the key to it's full range of motion isn't sufficient to move the inside lock switch far enough upwards to disengage. I've tried disassembling the whole thing and lubricating everything to no avail. As I recall, this is a problem other's have run into as well.

 

What i have seen installing alarms in old factory cars is that the brain or "control box" gets kicked or is just getting old and wont operate as well as it used to. If you do decide to get a newer alarm and you have to hook up the parking brake switch you could also just ground that anywhere and it should work just fine. But i live in iowa so there really isnt a demand for alarms here so we never worry about it.

 

My factory alarm would just randomly go retarded, but the horn wouldn't honk. It did it a handful of times earlier in the year and it hasn't done so since. I was just talking to a neighbor about it one time and it just went off... Oh well.

 

If you want to get the alarm to go off... roll down the windows, shut the car off, lock it, wait for the beep indicating the activation of the alarm, unlock and open the door from the INSIDE (dont use the key). It will go off. And if you are lucky your headlights will alternate instead of going up and down at the same time. To shut it up just close the door and lock then unlock it using the key from the outside. The end.

 

Disable theft alarm "how to" ------>http://www.nopistons.com/forums/inde...howtopic=35699

 

I love when the headlights alternate and it looks like the car is having a seizure.

 

Mine's never gone off. I once had to do what Waysho suggested just to make sure it was there.

But I have a question for everyone:

Is there more to the system than just the alarm? When the alarm is set is there also an immobilizer in the system that prevents the car from being started?

 

Yes, there is a starter cut relay. The alternating headlight thing is actually pretty funny. I like to pretend the car is winking at me over and over again!

 

Yeah, it's pretty cute.