Alarm sounding
My work colleague has acquired a nearly-new Vauxhall Crossland and the alarm is going off erratically. We both appreciate that the vehicle is under warranty, but he is becoming exasperated as, after numerous garage visits and overnight retentions, the fault persists. An alarm module has been changed.
He is given the response that as no fault codes are stored and they are at a loss for an answer. He had a theory that the recent high winds could be accentuating the problem and I thought this could be credible.
He asked me and I suggested: Faulty battery earth connection and/or lead
registering a voltage drop. Current drain, intermittently, by other modules on the car (Kim Henson’s Zafira had such a problem with the Entertainment System drawing current). Faulty battery (seen in Car Mechanics columns and susceptibility of Vauxhalls to this). He hopes to take any ideas back to the garage and would not attempt to disturb anything on the car.
Please say if you have any further ideas. Charles Morgan The suggestions you have put forward are very credible and certainly worth looking into, the battery drain would be the point on the list to consider and one which hopefully the suppling dealer will look into.
One other common reason for false alarm activation is that the interior sensor is either too sensitive or is intermittently detecting a problem, this can be because of severe temperature change or due to the effects of a heavy wind causing unwanted movement.
It is possible to disable the interior monitoring and it may be worth trying this to deduce if the interior sensors are the cause of the alarm sounding. To turn off the interior monitoring with all the doors closed, the button on the roof console should be pressed until the LED illuminates, the vehicle should then be exited and locked in the normal manner, you have ten minutes after pressing the button to exit and lock the vehicle.
This is a one-time operation and once the vehicle is unlocked the next time the vehicle is locked the interior sensors will again be activated.
If, with the interior sensors deactivated, the alarm does not sound then this will be an indication of the problem.