Clifford 5906 Flashing 5 Times

Hello all, I have a 5906 that has been installed for some time now and it seems to have a personality all its own. Frequently when I turn off the vehicle after driving a while, it will flash 5 times, but not every time. I'm not sure what this indicates. I generally do not use the remote start, although it does work. Also on occasion, the unit will begin to cycle in a strange way. That is, I will turn on the key and the LED will flash like it is armed and the lights begin to flash in a sequence that makes no sense, the starter will not engage. If I toggle the remote to disarm, it stops momentarily and then begins the cycle over again. Sometimes I can toggle the key on and off a couple of times to get it to stop. Other times I have to pull the fuse and force a reset. The work itself is highly detailed, every connection soldered and heatshrunk. Every ground is scraped,sanded, and nut and bolted.
The voltage when I test it is always fine, I just upgraded the battery and made sure the posts are emaculate and tight. Its driving me crazy and can't really trust it for critical driving. It is in a 1999 Jeep TJ Sahara 4.0. All the Jeep systems are working as expected. I do have two alpine 8327 impacts sensors and an aftermarket blinking LED hooked into the ground while armed circuit, but the draw is well under the max draw listed for the input. I have installed an untold number of security systems in my day, but this one has me bewildered. Any thoughts on what may be happening are certainly welcome... Thanks. Michael

OK, So I have more information on what is happening. The unit is attempting to go into remote start mode. If I turn on the key and then off, with the emergency brake engaged, the system behaves normally. If I turn the key on and then off again with the emergency brake off and my foot is NOT on the brake pedal, the unit attempts to remote start. It cycled through as though it will start but cannot because the emergency brake is off. If during this time I apply the emergency brake, the remote start engages. Stepping on the brake pedal then shuts it down. If I turn the key on and then off again with the emergency brake off AND my foot is on the brake pedal, the unit will not attempt to start, but flashes the park lights five times, which is the correct indicator to alert that the brake wire was active during a remote start event. So I have solved the park light flash mystery, but now I need to understand what might make the unit attempt a remote start cycle when toggling the key on and off with the emergency brake disengaged. This seems to be the real issue. Does anyone have an idea here? Could this be some kind of programming issue? Sure as long as I apply the emergency brake each time I turn off the key, there is no problem. But what in the world could be causing this??? I hope someone can point me in the right direction to begin troubleshooting this. Thanks, Michael

sounds like the main ground to the brain has a bad connection, this will cause very strange problems to happen like in your situation. make sure the ground is tight, and screwed to bare unrusted metal. this would be the first thing i would try. if this doesnt fix the issues then i would follow the ground wire all the way back to the brain and make sure the wire itself isnt damaged, if there are other things connected to that ground wire then make sure those connections are nice and tight.

OK, So here is the deal:

Back when I started this Clifford 5906 project, I did alot of research because I had been away from the industry for many years. Things have changed quite a bit, I mean 12 volts is still 12 volts but the alarms have evolved and the nuances in feature sets have more variation. So that said I needed to understand some of how the new features work and how to hook them up. WELL, when I was asking around on what the WHITE/ blue activation wire was for, I was told just tie it to the emergency brake wire and ground them both. I did tie them together, but ran them to the emergency brake wire, thinking it would be safer needing the ebrake engaged before remote start could operate. So what wound up happening is when I turned off the key and then applied the ebrake, the remote start was both "enabled" (WHITE/ black wire - grounded) and "activated" (WHITE/ blue wire - single ground pulse) at the same time. The vehicle would remote start unless my foot was on the brake pedal, which it normally would be thus ending the remote start event before it could engage and flashing the lights five times (active brake wire indicator). Now I have left the ebrake wire to the WHITE/ black input on the alarm, but I have disconnected and "taped off" the blue/white activation wire. Problem solved. I may use the white /blue activation wire down the road for emergency start if the chip in the key fails, but really I can't see much use for that feature. I guess thats one reason I did not understand the function to begin with. I thought "activation wire" meant another failsafe wire that needed to be grounded before remote "activation" could begin... (DOO!!!!Stupid Me!) Things seem to be working now as expected. I hope I have helped someone out there with that confusion. Thanks for the support, Michael

hahahaha i would have never guessed that was the problem. the purpose of the activation wire is so you can activate the remote start with some other system. ive used it before if someone had already had an alarm installed and they wanted to add a stand alone remote start unit but didnt want to bother with using two different remotes. most of the time though it never gets used at all.