'93 Eclipse GS locks & security

Hi, it's bitter cold already and only my passenger's side door lock works!  I can't even climb in through the trunk!

This car has power locks and probably factory keyless entry, but I'm not bothering with that when I can rig a real alarm. My main priority is to have reliable keyless entry for obvious reasons (I don't plan on ever fixing those locks!)

Working from this chart....  1990-93 Mitsubishi Eclipse Alarm Information 

I have tapped into the BROWN / blue and BROWN / white wires at the lock relay, batt and acc at the ignition switch and ground. This is about as far as I got before I realized my old viper didn't even have the 6 wire plug for the lock relay...oops!  I could solder directly to the pins, but I have a truck with manual locks to put this in, the rest of it works fine. So, before anything, I need a new alarm for the Eclipse....but having the wiring in order is a big plus!

This car already has one wierd problem, the interior lights won't come on with the doors open, but the trunk will turn these on. At first I assumed the pin switches, but the key and headlight warning bezel sounds when the door is open when either is left in/on... That may affect the alarm function, but I could care less, I need the locks to work first.

The other thing I've noticed is the passengers door lock will not lock the doors, it will lock then immeadiately unlock, only the driver's lock will lock the doors. It also does this while I'm unlocking it with the key, it unlocks....then locks again right away! This was a real embarrasment, so I started to open the door before it would lock again, at which point it would go into a 'power lock siezure' toggling back and forth, creating a new challenge to close the door inbetween lock cycles and drive away... it would eventually stop. The strangest thing is it doesn't do this any more AFTER I pulled the relay, slid those two pins out so I could have room to tap into the wires and then put it all back together. Maybe the relay is flakey or there was a bad contact point, whatever it was...it seems to work normally now. Before it would take about 15 tries before the lock would stay unlocked, so I could walk around instead of reach through the car and unlock it...which could also cause a power lock siezure...

When I touched either br/bl or br/wt wires to ground to test the relay, it would try to lock or unlock, then return the other way...as if it was being done from the passengers door switch. I am asumming this means these wires should be connected at the driver's door lock, but those aren't on the chart. So now I'm thinking I should have checked all of those wires at the relay with a multimeter and disregarded the chart. According to that chart, the driver's pin switch is in the door....wtf? doesn't it eventually get into the car? I'm sure it does, but finding it in the awful cluster under the kick panel is just about impossible. I checked for schematics in the Chilton's with no luck, I'll be checking out www.dsmtalk.com and the vfaq pages to get a handle on this situation.

I used the factory grounds under the driver's kick panel and made secure t-taps (w/o cutting any wires) and soldered them. It just seems very tight under there and a total pita to work on in Novemeber while my fingers are turning to icicles. Hat's of to you guys who do this everyday, I don't know how you keep your sanity!

If anyone has any suggestions for wiring the power locks and if I should replace the factory relay just for piece of mind, alarm suggestions...or just want to generally tell me I'm a nit-wit... all input is appreciated! Thanks and Happy Holidays!

Thanks Chris,

yes this post did get a little long, but you have helped to cut it down...

1. Only the passengers door opens with the key, the drivers door won't even let the key turn. The trunk lock is stuck too, but it pops open fine from the inside.  I know it's easy to swap locks, but this particular car is extra work, the window needs to come out or else it's a real pita. I'm good with odd repairs, but I figured I could let this one go with a decent working keyless entry.

2. that's a great suggestion, it wouldn't take much to put the DMM on that and say for sure it's shorted to ground. This problem is intermittent.

3. I'm aware of where the wires go, but it appears I will snap my neck and sprain my ribs and possibly get stuck in that position if I craw under that dash any further....but it will have to be done.  I'm sure all of the wires I need are right at the lock/unlock relay and it will take some DMM checking to straigten that out. I'd just like to know if I can interface directly to this with the alarm or if exra relays/modules will be needed. It just seems to me that the passenger's door doesn't have priority over the drivers door when locking. (i.e. the doors will remain unlocked if the drivers door is unlocked, unless it is locked at the drivers door or the passengers door with the key.)

4. I noticed a couple clean grounds right under the kick panel and I just used one of those. I just took the screw off and put it back on with the ring terminal. It is 0v and 0ohms, but I haven't even brought the function of the alram into the equation yet.

Thanks again, I'll check thouroly for shorts and things, I'm wondering if that relay might be half gone. My doors did the 'l/ul/l/l/ul/l/ul' siezure again this morning....I had to open one and close it again, open the drivers door and close it too at just the right time while my locks went polturgiest for another 20 seconds...

I already ordered a complete system with remote start for manual cars, 2-way pagers, keyless and security... I don't know what I needed all of that for,I just wanted my doors to open properly.

My only concern now is making the alarm function properly since the interior lights won't go on with either door open, but the trunk triggers the interior light and the door chimes work with the doors open too. I don't have any good schematics for the car to determine where these wires can be found common to both doors. If I had the factory service volumes, I'd be all over this....I hate to take my whole car apart just to trace down one problem. Regardless of this, I will be happy if I can disable the motor, remote start the car and lock/unlock it and just deal with the door/dome light thing later.

Thanks, I only used the ground for the alarm and grounded that at the same place the factory ground was. I touched the ul/l wires to these same areas to ground them out and test the locks. I could ground it anywhere with a self tapper, I just used that for convenience.

I'll need lots of luck and hopefully I don't freeze to death out there. This would be my first remote start so I'm interested to learn how to get that to work properly. The system I bought is a 'tach learning' type, so hopefully I made the right choice.

Those other problems are just regular Mitsubishi things...I kind of miss my 3KGT becasue that was the same year, yet had no electrical issues at all, fully loaded and everything worked fine at 200k miles. The DSM can be shhhe boxes when it comes to the electrical systems.