viper 5704v intermittent operation

Hi all I hope I'm posting in the right forum. I have a Viper 5704v installed on my Nissan Titan about a year ago and have been having issues with it's operation. One day the alarm activated on my truck and when I went to unlock the door it would not unlock with the Viper remote. I had to use the Nissan key fob to unlock the truck. After that the system was operating properly and I was able to lock / unlock the door with the Viper remote.

Several months later I changed my truck battery and again began having issues with the Viper remote not unlocking or locking the doors. The alarm would arm and disarm, but the doors would not unlock and the parking lights would not flash. I took it to a dealer (not the one who installed it) and they used to the bit writer to program the alarm and it began working fine again until the alarm went off one day and now I'm having the same issue again. I tried re-progamming the options manually using the remote in programming mode but its not correcting. Do I buy a bit writer myself to try to correct it or should I go to a different dealer and pay to have it looked at? The original dealer who installed the alarm is trying to charge me to remove the alarm to have it sent back to viper but they're not getting anymore of my money.

Thanks

I would not recommend buying a Bitwriter unless you are an installer. You'll use it once and never need it again. Also, a Bitwriter most likely isn't going to fix the problem. It sounds more like the Immobilizer. Is it using a DEI immobilizer? They're nothing but problems. You'd keep taking your truck somewhere to get it fixed if you don't replace the immobilizer with iDataLink.

What year is your truck?

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No question is stupid or not worth asking. You were once a noob, right? :)

Or a faulty sensor, door, hood, etc. The LCD remote should tell you what's triggering the alarm.
Or read the owners' manual, the diagnostic section.

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Amateurs assume, don't test and have problems; pros test first. I am not a free install service.
Read the installation manual, do a search here or online for your vehicle wiring before posting.

Sorry for such a late reply and thank you guys for taking the time to try to help. By the immobilizer are you referring to the DBALL for the remote start? And also my truck is an 06.

I unplugged the brain and plugged it back in and the alarm started working for a couple of months before going out again and for the past 2 weeks it won't lock or unlock the doors. The alarm still arms and disarms but the parking lights on the truck don't flash like they are supposed to.

The DB-ALL needs to be re-initialised, go to Xpresskit.com, look up your vehicle, year and model, download the install guide, last few pages.

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Amateurs assume, don't test and have problems; pros test first. I am not a free install service.
Read the installation manual, do a search here or online for your vehicle wiring before posting.

Forget my last comment, lock/unlock is controlled via the 5704, NOT the DB-ALL, it might be the wiring connection to your vehicle that's faulty.

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Amateurs assume, don't test and have problems; pros test first. I am not a free install service.
Read the installation manual, do a search here or online for your vehicle wiring before posting.

Thanks for the reply. I just got a wiring cheat sheet and I'm gonna trace all the wiring and see if it's correct. The other thing I was thinking was to buy a refurbed unit for $50 on ebay and just throw that in to see if it works.

Alright, so 2 things...

Howie, you were correct the first time. The DBALL takes care of the locks with data, if it was wired D2D. It also takes care of the parking lights. This leads me to believe a problem exists with the bus connection.

D2D is data-to-data. This means your remote start sends data to the DBALL instead of using individual signal wires for every function. 4 wires 'replaces' about 12, and is hooked up through a harness instead of splitting/soldering.

The problem is, the DBALL's aren't always reliable with this setup. Some techs wire up those 12 wires just to be sure they'll always work. In my experience, they work great as long as you disable all unneeded features in the DBALL. For example, your truck doesn't have sliding doors, so turn it off. This is done when programming the DBALL with the xkloader, and should have been done by the installer.

Back to troubleshooting. The data (HS-CAN) wires I was speaking of are located at the OBD-II port. These are the tan and tan/black wires from the DBALL. Trace these out and make sure they have a solid connection. These typically handle starting the car too, but in my experience, the CAN low wire controls body functions (i.e. Locks) while the high controls engine related things,or vice versa depending on the car. All it takes is one of these wires to come loose to create havoc.

If all else fails, you can do a soft reset the DBALL. This does not remove the firmware flash, but does reset custom settings to default. The DBALL will have to re-learn the key, which isn't too difficult. Disconnecting the battery does not do this for you. Just follow the instructions in the installation manual. Do NOT perform a hard reset. This will require a firmware reload.

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No question is stupid or not worth asking. You were once a noob, right? :)

freqsounds,

Thanks for the info. I downloaded the instructions and did a soft reset and then manually programmed the module. The door locks started working initially but then stopped again. I went back and reset it and then re-programmed it again but I couldn't get the locks to work again. The other thing I noticed is that the module would only allow me to go up to menu option 3. So after trying to program it several other times it's still not working. When I hit the unlock button on my remote, the DBALL flashes green and clicks twice but does nothing else. Think I should get a new module and replace it? Thanks

It's not defective. It lost its firmware. Going to need to get the DBALL reflashed. That's how they act before programming. The clicking you hear is the relays. They won't click if the firmware is taking care of the lights and doors. And because you're only going up to option 3,that tells me the firmware isn't installed.

You're going to have to find someone with an xkloader2 or get one on Amazon for about $40.

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No question is stupid or not worth asking. You were once a noob, right? :)

I called a shop who said they would flash it for $25 so I'll take it by there and see if they can also look the whole install over. The place that initially did the install wanted 2 hours of labor to pull the module and re-flash it so I'm never going back to them again. Thank you for the help!!

O.o

It takes 15 minutes to pull and reflash. Faster if you have a laptop. $25 is reasonable I suppose. Make sure you iterate to them that you want unsupported features disabled (i.e. sliding doors, non-equipped sensors, etc.). This will save future headaches.

The DBALL reads all data on the bus. It can't pick and choose what it needs to look for. Some data looks similar or contains a 'nested command' (i.e. lock the doors) where it's saying "Drivers door: lock, Passenger door: lock, left sliding door: lock". Even though you have a truck, Nissan makes their BCM so that their firmware can be installed in any one of their vehicles with different features. So it will send rogue commands regardless of whether the feature is installed.

The DBALL can read this data as the truck is sending it. So it says "ok, what's the status of the sliding door?" Your truck is going to reply "its open" and the alarm is going to trigger. Why? Because there is no sliding door. And Nissan's computers know that the door doesn't exist, but it can't communicate that. DBALL asked for a status, not whether the door exists.

Hopefully that makes sense. The sliding door is just an example. There are about 50 different things they can "check" and "uncheck" and they are used for outputs and inputs using the databus.

If you show them the thread, they'll probably know what I mean!

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No question is stupid or not worth asking. You were once a noob, right? :)

Well the shop was reluctant to just reflash the DBALL because they said it's a sloppy install and I will have issues again. They suggested re-installing the entire system. I ordered the xkloader2 and reflashed it tonight myself. Still isn't working, I get either flashing red, flashing orange or both on the DBALL and it still won't lock and unlock the doors. A couple of times that I flashed it, it would flash my parking lights on the truck though. Now I have to decide whether I want to order a new DBALL and try that or have someplace re-install the whole alarm.

Have you checked the data wires at the OBD II? Check for continuity between the pin at the DBALL and the data wire up the car's harness to verify connectivity. Do this for both the data wires. If they're not connected well, you'll have problems, and you won't be able to program the DBALL.

If you're going to swap the bypass, use a iDatalink module. They're much more reliable.

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No question is stupid or not worth asking. You were once a noob, right? :)