ok for one i don't really know where to post this so i hope this is ok. secondly, i searched and couldn't find anything specific to my problem. alright, onward:




over the last few days, i've been gutting the interior of the car. to be specific, interior panels, rear seat, and headliner. upon removal of the headliner, the rear dome light was a little loose in the hole it mounts in. it rattled and started irritating me so i decided to take it out, i don't use it anyway. i looked for a few minutes for some kind of snap or clip to take out a wire harness but i found none. so, i followed the wire up a few inches and clipped it. i taped the end off and stowed the wire away. that made the front dome light not work so screw it, i pulled that one out too. but, i unclipped the harness and stowed that wire as well.

now onto the problem. i bought my car used and it has an alarm. i think it's aftermarket but it's hard to say. locking it makes one chirp and the lights flash, unlocking makes two chirps and the lights flash. i have the stock orangeish light in the waterfall (scion security i think) and one of the punch out blanks by the fuse box has a red light that blinks when the system is armed. everything was normal until today. unlocking still chirps twice and the lights still flash, however locking it chirps four times along with the normal light pattern. the waterfall light and the red punch out light still blink. the system is armed, i so discovered by kicking my tire and the alarm went off.

clearly, i'm not concise. i don't want any detail to be foggy so as to figure out the best possible cause.

is there anything i should be worried about?

 

Many car alarms use the dome light as the door trigger to tell the alarm if one of the doors open while the alarm is armed (dome light comes on as soon as the door is opened, and therefore triggers the alarm) by disconnecting the alarm from the dome light, your car alarm thinks that one of your doors is open when you arm the alarm, and the extra chirps are your alarms way of notifying you that one of your doors isn't shut.

 

i see. thank you for the speedy response. if i get broken into and my door is opened, does that mean the alarm will not go off?

 

In it's current state, you are correct. Obviously your shock sensor still works, as you discovered, but if someone were to open one of your doors, your alarm wouldn't do anything. I recommend getting the dome light fixed pronto, and getting the door trigger wire from your alarm hooked back up. (FYI, door triggers can either be a negative trigger or a positive trigger, based on the fact that your alarm thinks a door is open when the door trigger isn't hooked up to anything leads me to believe you have a negative door trigger, which would read 12v while all the doors are shut, and show 0v when you open a door.)

 

ugh i knew i was going to have to put that bastard back in. thank you for the help, i'll tackle that one first thing tomorrow morning. as long as i reconnect the front light and splice the wires for the rear one, it should be good to go?

 

To be completely honest with you, I don't have a wiring diagram right in front of me, so I can't really advise you much further as far as what you need to hook up. The alarm I installed in my tC is connected to a different door trigger wire than the dome light wire. I don't want to tell you to do something and have it backfire (aka burn your car to the ground). All I can really say, is that ideally, the wire from your car alarm would be connected to the negative door trigger wire in your car. I'd recommend taking it to a reputable car alarm shop, they can probably fix the whole thing for you in about 10 minutes, and probably wouldn't charge that much. I install them where I work, and I might charge you 20 bucks to fix it tops.

 

raab your a smart dude... we need more people willing to help people like you

 

yeah x2

thank you. i tried putting the back light back in and nothing happened. i took it out and the alarm chirped once like it's supposed to. but, i never checked to see if the front light works. i'm sure that the next time i lock the car, it won't arm properly. murphy's law hard at work. thanks for your advice, i will take it in as soon as i can.

 

Thanks, really it just worked out that this happened to be a subject that I have some expertise in, where with most Scion stuff, I'm still learning as I go (came over from the Jeep world, if you have Wrangler questions, I'm your guy). Hopefully people are just willing to help me out when I have Scion questions.