97 LX450 Factory Alarm Issue

[DirtyLawyer]

Parked truck two months ago. My Father starts it up here and there in attempt to keep truck charged.

Entire time, factory alarm is activated. Two days ago, he goes to start and it is dead. Gets a jump, lets it run for 30ish minutes. Turns off, tries to restart but won't. Remote now won't operate the doors. Dash lights and front indicator signals have been "flickering" or "cycling" with an audible noise, a clicking sound. Rear lights not doing this. Doing this for hours before I get over to look at it. I get there, try to turn over, battery seems to be very weak, no turn over.

I open hood to jump the battery, touch the positive jumper cable to battery and alarm immediately goes off. I never actually jumped the battery, it was simply upon contact. I use remote to turn off alarm. I then crank vehicle, it starts. I let run for 20-30min. I turn off, and try again...dead. I re-jump and take for nice drive. I can turn off and on, no issue.

So, I tried to use remote to lock and unlock doors, then it would not start...I jumped it, and it starts. I can turn it off and and, so long as I do not use remote to lock/unlock before starting it.

My truck does not have hacked electrics.

What say the forum? I searched, but didn't see this issue. Hmmmm.

 

[BILT4ME]

My factory alarm decided to go haywire and start becoming a battery drain. Ove the course of about a month, it caused my truck to be deader than a rock 3 times. Then I caught it acting up. I came out of a restaurant and may parking lights were on. I could NOT shut them off. I don't even have a fob for mine. I had to disconnect the battery to clear the alarm and restart it.

Then last week was the coup de gras! I got in the truck on Sunday evening about 6:30 PM to rearrange vehicles for Monday morning. I started it, and while backing out the drive, the horn started honking and the interior lights flashed. Finally, the horn stayed on, so I drove back into the driveway, shut it off, and proceeded to rip out the entire alarm system. It took me about 4-1/2 hours, but I also traced every wire and removed the mobile phone system that was in it when it was from the dealership long ago........

No problems since!

I have no idea what caused it to decide to start doing this. During Thanksgiving 2016, I had a can of Coke blow up under the driver's seat, right on top of the alarm box, but it didn't kill it then.

I removed quite the pile of wires.

Good Luck!

 

[DirtyLawyer]

My factory alarm decided to go haywire and start becoming a battery drain. Ove the course of about a month, it caused my truck to be deader than a rock 3 times. Then I caught it acting up. I came out of a restaurant and may parking lights were on. I could NOT shut them off. I don't even have a fob for mine. I had to disconnect the battery to clear the alarm and restart it.

Then last week was the coup de gras! I got in the truck on Sunday evening about 6:30 PM to rearrange vehicles for Monday morning. I started it, and while backing out the drive, the horn started honking and the interior lights flashed. Finally, the horn stayed on, so I drove back into the driveway, shut it off, and proceeded to rip out the entire alarm system. It took me about 4-1/2 hours, but I also traced every wire and removed the mobile phone system that was in it when it was from the dealership long ago........

No problems since!

I have no idea what caused it to decide to start doing this. During Thanksgiving 2016, I had a can of Coke blow up under the driver's seat, right on top of the alarm box, but it didn't kill it then.

I removed quite the pile of wires.

Good Luck!

Looks like I'm in good company!

 

[DirtyLawyer]

I wonder if setting it to "valet" mode would eliminate the issues...I'll have to try and see.

 

[RyRoRyan]

More than likely just a bad battery. Put a known good one in there and test starting it a few times. I bet it will be fine. Alarms do real funky things when battery voltage is low.

 

[ppc]

First thing would be to clean your battery connections. Then put a battery charger on it for a day a see what happens by checking voltage over time with a meter.

 

[LTD FJ]

I replaced my key fob and valet sensor. Have the part numbers at home, but currently working out of the country.

 

[DirtyLawyer]

Battery is 2 years old - X2Power AGM. Connections are clean and tight. I need to see what it's reading, but I'm in between places and lots of my tools are packed away.

Just thought it was bizarre that use of the remote to get in/out of truck seemed to cause a problem, but when I just used key to manually enter vehicle it started up fine.

I will try to start it again today and see if it fires up after sitting for a few days without alarm activated.

 

[bloc]

Letting the battery sit dead for any length of time is really bad for it. Permanently impacts the ability to hold a charge.

I agree with others here, the battery is most likely bad and once you fix that (almost) known issue then you can start from a better place to diagnose alarm issues. I'm betting it'll fix it right up.

 

[DirtyLawyer]

update: multimeter showed battery not toast. Put a charge on it with a CTEK 7002, that did the job. Voltage drop during start is within limits, and everything seems to be back to normal. Thanks for the input guys.