95 Talon Headache

Installing a Audiovox prestige platnium 750  RS with alarm(shock sensor, siren).  Trying to help out a friend and nothing has gone right.  Hooked everyting up.  Reconnected the battery and the alarm started going off.  Hit the disarm button and the alarm shut off, the doors unlocked and then the alarm started going off again.  Hit unlock and it shut off... started to take it into program mode for tach, not  reading tach, but not locking out remote start after a falied learn either(manual says that if a lean is attempted with out a signal it will lock out RS untill tach is learned.  Checked programming and the tach is turned on.  All the while fighting the alarm that keeps goiing off.  Plus as the parking lights are pulsing the unit is spratically flashing the lights so fast its as if they arent even going off.  The relay in the brain box is clicking like crazy.  Giving the brain box a smack caused the lights to operate properly again for a moment.  I rechecked everything 3 times, all connections are good I'm lost.  Defective unit? I hate to make that call without some other opinions on the issue. 

BTW its a turbo and the ecm is located ahead of the counsel.  Tapped the wite wire on the drivers side clip. 

please help

thanks

-Jeff

Also, Does anyone know how old this unit might be? My guess is about 5 years... it was brand new in the box, but the guy got it off of ebay.

thanks

-Jeff

Low current would cause the unit to act funny... makes sense I'll check it out.

thanks

-Jeff

Rich,

Thanks for the post, While I'm still going to test a few more things, it makes me feel a little better about pointing to defective parts, for some reason I always want to look for a bad hook up or something... something that is at least in my controll to fix.

thanks

-Jeff

I'm pretty sure the APS-750 is a current model; at least we're still selling them where I work.  They're very nice too; I've rarely seen them go bad.

Don't forget that if the ground isn't hooked up, a lot of stuff will be going haywire.....and just because you found clean metal doesn't mean it's actually grounded.....can never hurt to retest.

Also, do you have the antenna plugged in?  I suppose you must have, since you're getting some response from the remote.

And about that tach learning:  If you haven't programmed tach yet, and you try to remote start, the unit should flash the parking lights 7 times, a very brief flash each time.  Or if you go into programming and select "N/A" instead of "tach," that's voltage sense right there......I wouldn't complete the install tachless.....but still, this can be a useful troubleshooting tool.

Also don't forget that if the little red two-pin plug going to that control switch is disconnected, the remote start won't work at all.  I usually cut the switch off and tie the two wires together permanently.

Chris,

The antenna on this one is a wire wip, not the plug in kind like found on the APS-685(I've had good luck with these) and most of the newer audiovox.

As far as the tach learn, I found it odd that it would remote start without ever being taken into the learn mode.  I'm familar with the 7 flash deal, and was surprised when it remote started on me... I hit the button on accident when the alarm wouldn't shut off...  and it started up(ran the starter on, and I quickly killed it) I checked to make sure that it was programmed for tach... it was, but it still wouldn't respond to the tach programming in any way... Not to mention that the alarm kept going off the whole time.

As far as the ground, its a good connection, I checked with my multi meter when things were acting funny.

thanks for the ideas

-Jeff

Hmm.  That is weird then.  I've only been installing Audiovox for a year, but I've never seen a remote start with a built-in whip antenna-----so it must be an older unit as you suspect.

Maybe it's used or refurbished?  You never know----maybe a long time ago, a retail shop swapped out a defective brain for a customer-----and put the used brain in with the new wire harnesses, for future exchange for credit with the manufacturer----and then the shop went out of business or whatever, and the thing ended up on eBay or at a flea market or whatever......just a possibility.

I've never had this problem with Audiovox, but I've seen it on a couple of other alarms---sometimes there's a faulty crimp where the wires go into the alarm's plug.  You could leave the alarm plugged in, and I believe if you turn the brain upside down, there's a bit of each pin exposed......you could make some tests right there, in case of a bad crimp or a wire that's broken inside.

If you're wondering about when it was made, most Audiovox stuff that I've seen has the date stamped into the plastic------there are two "dials" there, and one dial is the month, the other is the year.

It looks like the unit might be defective in any case, but I'm still trying to think here of anything else you should check first.  I'm just thinking out loud here; not really sure if any of this applies to your install or not.

If it's set for passive arming, and you don't have the door trigger hooked up (or if you have the wrong wire), or if a door is closed........it will re-arm itself after thirty seconds if the key is turned off............it sounds from what you're saying that it goes off again instantly, but thought I'd mention it anyway.

Have you verified the tach wire you've hooked up to?  Again, it's always possible you have the wrong one.  And if you test for it right at the pin going into the brain...........you can verify the correct wire, the quality of your connection to it, whether or not the wire got pinched or broken going through the firewall, whether or not the crimp going into the brain is good...........you can verify all this at once by simply testing right at the brain.

Another dumb and obvious one, but are all the fuses still good?  I think the thick RED / white wire powers the brain, and the ignition 1 and 2 relays.  The thick red powers the accessory and starter relays.  And of course one of the white wires is the input for the parking lights.  If one fuse is blown and the other isn't, weird things might be happening.

I thought the same thing about a shop swapping one out and then it getting sold on ebay. 

The alarm is pretty much going off instantly after it disarms.  I read about the passive vs active to see if that made a difference.  Yea I could have the wrong tach... thats happened before, but everthing else seems to point to a defective unit.  The fuses are all good, have power at all connections when I tested the ignition harness.

At this point I'm waiting to see what the guy wants to do... I think I'll be ripping everything back out,

thanks for all the advice

-Jeff