Problems With Prestiege Alarm

[Deep]

My car came with a crappy alarm and its giving me some hassles. My car's been parked for a few months but I still drop in a good battery every once in a while and take it for a boot. The problem is that the alarm stays on as long as the key isn't in the ignition. So I'll connect the battery, the alarm will go off, but as soon as I turn the key to start, it stops. Then when I pull into my garage and turn the car off, the alarm starts again until I disconnect the battery.

There was a thick-ish wire that looked like speaker wire running to my battery, I disconnected that but it still goes off. I can't find a valet switch either. All my electronics are fine, all fuses and the alt. One more thing, the alarm isn't at full volume, it sounds like the battery is dying, very slow and quiet but the battery shows a full charge.

Any ideas?

[woshiagni]

Sounds like that might have been the power wire for the alarm, or the power connection to the alarm unit might be loose?

Alarm sees that the ignition is off, power to itself was cut, so it runs the siren off of it's battery (probably a 9v, incidentally which is also probably close to dead) -- which is why it sounds like it's slowly dying.

If you don't need your alarm to function, open the brain of your unit and pop out the battery. If you have a starter-kill relay this could complicate things, but it doesn't sound like you do since the car will start while the siren is going off...

Good luck!

[menaboy64]

I have a Prestige too but it doesn't have any of those problems, it also has starter kill and a few other features so it may be a different model, maybe yours is an older model. Listen to woshiagni, he sounds right about this.

[Deep]

Sounds good, thanks for the advice guys. I'm just wondering if its possible to reset the alarm somehow. And where do installers typically put the brain? I'm assuming under the dash near the drivers side kick panel?

[woshiagni]

If you want to reset it, you should be able to pull the negative power for a few seconds and replace it. You might want to remove the backup battery first though.

Typical places for the alarm are usually the driver's side kick panel or behind the knee bolster (around the steering column area), less common places (if they worked harder to hide it) might be behind the glove or under the center console.

[menaboy64]

I just went out and disconnected my battery and wether the alarm is armed or not when I disconnected it, when I reconnect it the alarm starts wailing away. I just had to shut it off with my remote, once I do that it works normal. Do you have a remote and if so will it disarm it once the battery is reconnected? I just figured since we have the same type I'd see if I could give you any ideas.

[Deep]

Thanks a lot guys, I found the brain and the battery attached to it and disconnected both. It took me a good 25 minutes to find it buried under a harness on the passenger side. When I plugged it back in and reconnected the battery the siren started up again but when I disarmed it, it went off and stayed off.