Helo all I'm a newbie to this forum, and hope I can get some advice on my remote starter issue.
I've got a 2002 Mazda Protege5, automatic transmission.
I bought the car about 13 months ago, and the dealer installed an Audiovox alarm/remote starter, model PRO-9675FT4.
The thing has worked flawlessly for over a year, but now the starter is giving me some serious problems:
The car will start, shut down within a minute or two, then re-start. I know the unit will try to re-start the car if the first attempt fails, but that's not my issue here - this is when the car is already running fine - it shuts down and re-starts.
Also (and this is what REALLY bothers me) - the other day I remote-started the car - seemed to be working fine this time - when the starter engaged WITHOUT shutting the car down first - resulting in that familiar grinding sound - this one really ticked me off, because now the unit is causing possible damage to my car.
WTF is going on here? The car runs perfectly itself (as it should being just over a year old
), and so does the alarm/remote entry, etc. It's only the starter that is giving me headaches.
A few things I should mention: The temperature lately has been near 100 degrees - no idea if this could somehow foul up the starter module. Second, I recently re-wired a set of stock running lights on my car; the bumper side lamps used to work as extra "parking lights", but I re-wired them to work as flashers only, simply by cutting the existing power wire, and tapping into the flasher power wire from the front turn signals. The front bulbs are dual filament, and therefore have three wires - ground, flasher power, and parking light power wires. The side lamps are single filament, with only two wires - parking lamp power and ground - I just changed the power source for the sidelights, and can't see how this would affect anything, unless the starter somehow senses the voltage in the parking lamp circuit upon start-up - the voltage would now be different, because there is one less bulb illuminated per side.
I just figured I'd list all possible variables, and things I have changed, in case I somehow caused the problem I'm having.
I'm getting ideas before calling the warranty department for this - if it's due to my "mods", then it won't be covered, but at least I can fix it myself. If it is just a faulty unit, then I'll be covered for parts (labor is only one year - I'm a month past the year point - bastards
).
Thanks for any insights.
~HH
2002 Sunlight Silver Metallic Mazda Protege5