My parking lights have never worked properly since the installation of the alarm. Now they only work when I turn the switch on manually. The headlights work fine. They are connected to the green wire as this color chart says:
( 1994 Toyota Supra Alarm Information )
They have gone out once before and I isloated the issue to burt a burt out OEM diode on the Avantguard4 harness. Thinking it may have been current I doubled the amount of diodes (not the correct solution). It burnt out again a few days later. One symptom is that the parking lights are dim when the alarm powers the circuit (when it does work). When the alarm is powering the parking lights and I turn on the switch everything comes on brighter. This tells me their may be a load issue. Does it need a relay?
If anyone can help me on what how I should connect these that would be great.
Thanks,
Alex
you shouldnt need diodes or a relay either. check the polarity of the parking light flash output of the alarm..if its a positive trigger, grab the +green wire in the drivers kick panel (itll be on the bottom of the fuse box, in a white plug). If it is a negative trigger, grab the -green wire (and it will be at the steering column...just use a test light or probe to find it.)
If that doesn`t work..i would change my ground..grounds are tricky sometimes, if the siren is kind of weak sounding, that is almost a definate poor ground problem.
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With a torch and a big enough hammer...it WILL friggin fit!!
Thanks for the info, I will try all of it tonight.
One question, without a diode will current feed back if the alarm is powering the circuit and I turn on the light switch? I thought this is what the diode was avoiding. I only replaced the one that fried because clifford supplied one. If not then it makes my life much easier!
Thanks,
Alex
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BTW Manual for AVG4 says its a dual brown wire (+) trigger. I will make sure and then test the wire in the drivers kick pannel. I think that is where i have it already and the diode could be causing the problems.
Alex
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Without a diode, will current feed back if the alarm is powering the circuit and I turn on the light switch?
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dynmicracr wrote:
When the alarm is powering the parking lights and I turn on the switch everything comes on brighter. This tells me their may be a load issue. Does it need a relay?
Step 1:
AG4's parking light output is 12V. Using a multimeter, make sure you are getting 12V upon output. This would be at arm/disarm, and since I am assuming you are using the nightvision, also at night. If you want to test during the day, simply cover the photocell with a folded piece of paper, so you trick the alarm into thinking it is night. If you are getting a solid 12V, then you know everything is good on the alarm's end.
Step 2:
Some cars list 2 parking light wire options. One is postive, the other negative. Since the AG4's output is only positive, most people just find the positive wire, hook it up, and done. The problem here is that there is a parking light relay that you are NOT triggering when you hook it up this way. When you manually turn on your parking lights using the light stalk, you are actually using the negative wire. When the relay turns on, this is when you see the lights get slightly brighter. This is usually not a problem for most people because their alarms dont offer any kind of nightvision capabilities. (i am just generalizing here, since I am sure some alarms other than clifford offer "lights" control). So these other alarms are just giving "softer" lights at arm/disarm.
I went thru all this on my gf's 99 Corolla. It bugged the crap out of me that the lights were noticeably less bright than when I turned them on manually. So i wired up a relay to invert the 12V ouput from the alarm into a negative output, and I went and found the neg parking light wire for her car.
Techsoft list's your neg parking light wire as green at the steering wheel column. I know your positive wire is ALSO green, but the neg is usally a lighter green. Please check with a mutlimeter before you hook anything up, if you decide to go this route. Otherwise, you will have just live with the dimmer lights.
As for your lights not coming on at all automatically, if step 1 checks out ok, then it may be a bad connection.
dynmicracr wrote:
Without a diode, will current feed back if the alarm is powering the circuit and I turn on the light switch?
There should be no feedback. You should be fine without a diode.
Thanks for the help guys. I found the green wire at the kick panel easily. I found all the wires underneath the steering column but there was no solid green wire that I could see. Even light green. There were green wires but they all had a stripe on them. I will have to give it another look later.
For now I just connected the wire directly to the green wire at the kick panel. I do get some dimming but its not too bad. I will try to give it another look this weekend and see if I can probe around for the wire at the column. I really need to get a no-load test probe first though.
Thanks again for all the help.
Alex
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