Well, as some of you have read, I bought a 92 Max SE 5 sp with 56K on it last week. I bought it in LA and drove it up to my home In Washington State over 2 days. It performed flawlessly. When I got home it was snowing. It was the first time it had seen snow. I go to start it up yesterday morning and as I hit the key fob to open the locks, the alarm goes off. It will not stop. I hit the smaller button on the fob. I hit them both together and separately, but the alarm kept going. I ended up having to yank the positive terminal line off the battery to make it stop. Needless to say, my Max is now inoperative. Any ideas?

 

The only other thing I can add is that I noticed the positive cable to the battery was loose enough to be able to take off with my bare hands. Also, the previous owner replaced the in-dash stereo/CD player days before I bought it. Again, everything worked perfectly for the days it took to drive up. Is there a way to disable the alarm? I am out of ideas...

 

what kind of alarm is in it?...if its a DEI (Viper,python,sidewinder) take it to a shop that installs them and take it out...or if you're handy, take the dash, ignition area apart and disconnect the stupid thing...what I would do to get MY car moving....

 

It looks like it is the factory alarm...

 

For a factory alarm I think all you have to do is, from the outside of the car lock it with the key then unlock it. But if you have a remote for it it's probably not factory.

 

Thanks for that tip using the key to lock then unlock. Worked like a charm. You are a lifesaver!

 

You know... this story sound strangely familiar! It sounds like you've got a remote-starter with keyless entry right? So do I, except they didn't hook up the keyless entry alarm disable to the OEM alarm disable circuit. So now what happens is if I try to unlock my car with the remote the alarm will go off because the OEM alarm isn't getting the "disarm" signal.

I was so disgusted I didn't want them monkeying around with it anymore so I'll fix that myself in the spring.

Is this what's happening to you? I have to use the remote to lock the doors if I want to use the keyless later but the alarm doesn't arm of course. Unless you've done this before (locked car normally and opened with remote) and it worked okay in the past....


btw, the stock alarm takes ~30 secs to arm (when the light goes out), and the trunk lock will also disarm the alarm. It's all in the owner's manual if you have it.

 

That is exactly what I have. There is a smaller button that is supposed to disable the alarm, but it doesn't. I need to play around with it, but you can imagine my dismay when the bugger went off and I had no clue what was happening. I am not really sure what is going on. I thought that the alarm was armed because that little red light is flashing when I lock the doors. Is is supposed to make some sort of sound when it arms?>

 

any time

 

You have a little red light? That almost sounds like part of an aftermarket alarm since Max's don't come with one. That would complicate things. No, the car doesn't make a peep until it goes off.

I'll have to find where they put the darn remote unit and then hook up the right leads to the alarm disarm wires. I'm not sure how you would go about doing this (assuming there is no aftermarket alarm) without the remote's installation diagram or knowing the pinout of the unit though....

You probably should get ahold of a repair manual with wiring diagrams and schematics if you want to fix it yourself. I think then you could "reverse engineer" the remote and infer which wire does what that way. Craig also has a site with wiring colour codes on them http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gte671n/mymax.html You could also try contacting him and ask him nicely to take a look at this thread - he's the wiring/electrical guru around here!

 

On the factory alarm, one of the red warning lights on the dash does come on (for 30 seconds, I believe) when you lock with the key. Don't think it flashes, though.

 

I don't know about yours, but all I've seen are yellow lights!

 

The red light is to the right of the stick shift, I believe. I am almost positive it is stock.

 

No thats not stock I have the yellow orange one thats says security

 

I'm gonna go look now. There IS a yellow light that says security on the dash amongst the other lights, but then there is a bulb that just out from the base of where the stick is. Lemme check. You guys would know better than I if it was stock.