Hi gang,

I need some help/advice. I have a '04 coupe with only 18K on it. Bought it a year ago, and the warranty expired last month (of course).

First problem happened on Saturday. Wife drove car, and exterior light failure warning came on. Blinkers wouldn't work. I found a fried fuse in the inside panel and replaced, which seemingly fixed the issue. Drove it Sunday morning for a couple of errands no issue.

This morning, I went to take my son to school and the unlock button on the fob wouldn't work. In fact, none of the buttons worked. So I thought I could just unlock the driver's side door manually with the key and be on my way.... ALARM! Holy crud!

I managed to pop the hood and went to the fuse box underneath. The manual said fuse 9 was the alarm. I tried to pull it and the alarm went back on again. Ouch! The frickin' speaker must be right there.

So then I yanked fuse 26 (20 amp) which is supposed to be for central locking. The flashing warning lights went off. So I was able to open the car door without the alarm going off. I then tried to start the car....but it wouldn't start. It tried at first, then acted like the battery died.

Couldn't spend anymore time on it; had to have wife drive kids to school and me to work.

So here's my question for when I get back home tonight.

It's possible I left the interior light on for more than a day. If the battery was just about dead, could it cause the remote to not open the doors and disable the alarm? I remember playing with the inside light when I was working on the issue on Saturday, as I was making sure everything else electrical was working. I, possibly, just never turned it off, and not driving it at night, never noticed it was on (it's not terribly bright....nor, apparently, am I....)

Any ideas?

Tonight I plan to brave the alarm once more, yank fuse 26, and try jumping the battery to see if I can get it to start and charge. Then see if the fob works. The battery is original, so perhaps it's dying. But the question still applies: could a dead battery cause the fob not to work, or could this be indicative of a more expensive electrical issue?

Thanks in advance for the replies.

EDIT: Also, is there a quick way to disable that damn alarm horn, just until I get all this figured out? Fuse 9 sure didn't do it.....

Mark

 

I found the thread regarding pulling the battery cables, waiting, then replacing them to see if it clears. The battery in FOB works - had wife try it at home in a dark closet and it flashes faintly, so I think it's good.

I also read that the reason the car wouldn't start is most likely because of the alarm kill switch, and also read that pulling fuse 9 is a guarantee for the alarm to scream. Wonderful. You'd think they would mention that somewhere in the fuse box!

More than likely, the battery in the car is the original and probably needs to be replaced. At least, that's my hope. I'm hoping when I was pulling and checking all the fuses over the weekend, I didn't damage anything. That fuse block under the hood sure feels wiggly. You press in some of the fuses in the middle (right side) and the whole section drops down a tiny bit. Scary....

I will try the battery trick tonight when I get home and see if that does it. If I can get the alarm off, then I can take the battery in and have it tested (and replaced if necessary.)

Still, does anyone have any other ideas? I'll check the control unit once I can get the hatch open without losing hearing. Although it's been near 100 the last few weeks here in Northern California, so I'm not too sure about water getting in there. I had my son wash the car a week ago, but I didn't notice any water in the back hatch.

Mark

 

Same thing happened to me. Read all about it here (although it sounds like you already may have). It was supposedly caused by a low battery and hasn't acted up since the battery was charged back up. The solution, for at least a temporary fix, is to remove the battery contacts completely for about 20 seconds, then reconnect. That should reset the electrical system and whatever causes this irritating issue.

Good luck!

 

Yes, indeed it was your post that gave me the info and what to try tonight. I thank you for posting all of that; I really hope it does the trick. If it does, then I'll be running the battery over to my local parts house for a thorough testing (though I haven't ruled out my own stupidity and may have really left that danged inside light on.)

Fingers crossed. I'll post later tonight or tomorrow morning as to the results, as this may also help someone else along the way.

Mark

 

Not sure why a low battery causes the alarm. I have a roadster, and if the trunk is left ajar it drains the battery due to the inside light. I've done this a couple times as has the wife. I've never had an alarm go off but I leave the car unlocked in the garage - it just fails to turn over - a gentle buzz as the starter fails to do anything followed by my cursing.

Did you remember to let your wife out of the dark closet?

 

Dangit! I knew I forgot something.

As for why a low battery would cause a problem, just guessing, but I'm thinking the componentry that received the signal from the remote isn't getting the right signal, or low voltage in general just causes issues.

If my alarm had been off, then I might have been able to start it and charge it back up. Or it would have just not started and I would have gone right to the battery as a source. As you mentioned, you leave yours unlocked, so when it's dead, the lock/unlock/alarm never enters into it.

I'm just really hoping a low battery is really the culprit and not deeper electrical issues. The fact that the fuse blew on Saturday before the key fob/alarm issue has me worried....

Mark

 

My Jetta VR6 had very, very similar problems. The alarm system going crazy, door locks not working properly. After nearly going deaf and waking up all my neighbors all the time, it turned out that the battery was bad.

Have you ever had to jump start your car? If so, then it means that your battery has deep-discharged and usually that means that the battery's energy capacity is significantly reduced.

 

No, haven't had to jump start it. So far, it's been really a dream car. Only the last few weeks (had a tire go bad about 2 weeks ago) has there been any issues.....right after the warranty expired.

I swear these cars have factory-set timers in them, with various components set to randomly explode/fail/torment once that timer (aka "Warranty Period") has ended. Grrr....

 

UPDATE:

What a mess....okay, here goes.

I pulled the battery cables, waited 1 minute, then put the cables back on, positive then ground. I was immediately met with the alarm screaming at me, only THIS time the alarm never reset! It kept going and going. I yanked off the ground cable, and the alarm immediately died.

Pulled out the battery and took it down to parts shop. Tested fine. Crap.

Went back home, put battery back in, connected cables, alarm started, ears began to bleed...

Pulled ground and called dealer. Told him what was happening. He suggested I replace the FOB batteries, just to be sure. If no go, then I'd have to have the car towed in (my expense) and they'd charge me $59 just to look at it. Crap Part 2.

Got batteries, replaced them in the FOB, replaced the cable on the battery, alarm started, dog across street whined briefly then head exploded. I yanked the ground again. Began silently weeping.

My wife, while all this was going on, left a message for my brother to call me (he's a mechanic, though many hours away) and he called at that moment. Told me to suck it up and 'splain, Lucy.

He told me to double-check the fuses again. I looked, and told him I checked all of these and...they...were...go- Crap Part 3: The Revenge of Crap.

The 15-amp fuse in the Radio Frequency slot (30-something) was fried. I didn't have any spares, so I stole the 15 from the slot next to it (glove compartment light/cig lighter). Crossed fingers, toes and eyes, which made it a bit difficult to see the groub cable, but I managed to get it on. Alarm immediately sounded, the stained glass windows in the church shattered, and I quickly hit the unlock button on the FOB. The alarm went dead.

The silence was deafening.

My brother told me to go start the car. Of course! I tried it....nope. I checked that same fuse. Burned out AGAIN. He asked me if there were any spares. I said I had a 20 and a 40 left. He said to put the 20 in there and try again. It started without a problem.

I walked over to the parts store and grabbed a box of 15A fuses, and replaced the two that were missing, putting the 20 back in the spare slots. So far the car has restarted without issue, though - for whatever reason - the FOB will not remote open or close the car, and therefore the alarm remains (blissfully) off. When I do use the key, though, in the driver's side, it does lock/unlock the passenger/hatch/fuel door, so I'm not really missing anything.

Most likely there is a short somewhere. My brother told me to check the ground going to cable. He said it should go to the engine block. I told him the ground cable was about a foot long and screwed into the metal on the inside of the engine compartment. He stopped laughing about 10 minutes later, said a few choice words he must have learned in the Corps, and told me to pull the cable out and check for corrosion. I told him it looked clean, but did it anyway (which naturally required me to pull the battery back off. Whee.) There was a little there, which I wire-brushed off, and then replaced everything.

All (except the remote FOB part) seems to be working. Although it is possible the FOB is working as well. What I refuse to try is locking it remotely. I have work and kids to run to school the rest of the week, and can't be messing with this at 6am in the morning. It may be possible that, if the FOB didn't lock it, then hitting unlock won't "unlock" it. I don't remember this. (Anyone care to try it and let me know? Lock the car using the key in the door, then hit unlock with the remote. Does it unlock the doors?)

No matter what, there is/was something electrically wrong going on. As soon as I can afford it, I'm going to have it checked. My brother specializes in electrical, so it may just mean a drive up to his place one Saturday and crash on his living room floor while he checks it all out....

Thanks again to everyone who replied. If ANYONE has any other suggestions or ideas, please post them here.

Mark

 

sounds like something that happened to me a while ago. the car will act up if it has a low battery. make sure your battery is in perfect working order. i had to replace mine it also sounds like the buttons on the remote where pushed to many times with the car battery low so there out of sync. they get out of sync easily they are easy to reprogram. but it sounds like the alarm system is doing exactly like its supposed to remember the siren senses battery voltage and it will go off if power is disrupted the siren has a battery built into it so it will keep going off with the car battery disconected. i dont know if this helps but it happened to me just my 2 cents.........

 

Thanks for the suggestions. The only problem there is that a) the battery tested fine, and b) the alarm went off after I disconnected the ground on the battery.

It could be that the battery on the alarm is very, very small and discharged with the 8 or 9 alarms it issued, but I doubt it: the sound never warbled or decreased in volume. And when I yanked that ground cable, it silenced immediately. I'm not doubting the separate power supply claim; only that I could open the doors, etc with the battery removed and there was no alarm.

I'll search the forum for how to reset/reprogram the keys on the FOB, though I must admit I'm hesitant to do so. Worried if I get it working again, the alarm will engage and then get stuck again....

Mark

 

The problems continue....

I keep blowing the blinker fuse. I'm going through a 15A fuse a day now. It just seems to be that fuse (interior fuse box, #4) right now, but it also must relate to the FOB fuse (under hood main box, #36). However, since I'm avoiding using the FOB, I'm not sure if it will blow again if I try it.

I haven't been able to identify any particular action that causes it to short. Sometimes it's out the moment I start the engine, other times it goes out mid-drive (which sucks, because losing your blinkers in traffic - besides being illegal - is scary as hell, especially the way people drive around here.)

I'm hoping to go up to my brother's this weekend, and have him look over the electrical system. I don't believe he has the tools to pull any codes, so it may be a crap shoot, but it's cheaper than my local dealer just to "look" at it....sigh....

 

Oh man, I feel your pain. I have no help to offer but I would be very apprehensive about driving the car several hours away from home with an electrical problem. If something is toasted, spare parts can be few and far between. I think I'd take the thing into my local dealer and demonstrate the problem by blowing out his show room windows. That should get his attention.

 

The turn signal fuse isn't a "turn signal fuse" per se. It is actually the illumination control unit fuse.

This means that you have to check for short circuits on the following boxes:

* Illumination Control Module

* Console Switch Group (hazard and door lock switches)

* Body Control Module

According to the manual, the following units can't actually cause a short (because they're read in as a digital signal off the body control module):
* Turn Signal Multifunction Switch (the one on the steering column)

* Left Rear, Left Front, Right Front and Right Rear lamp assemblies.

My Jetta ALSO had a problem where the Fuel Pump fuse would blow all the time. It turned out that the problem was the O2 sensor shorting on the same circuit.

Good luck hunting this down. The best way to find out the problem is by looking at Service Manual page 8W-10 and 8W-44 and checking each element on the pathway to ground.

That 15A fuse blowing is a good thing, it means that the problem is easy to find. Don't lose hope and keep your head!

 

Great info! Thank you, my friend. I'll take this along to my brother's tomorrow. Yeah, it's a long drive, but so far, only that one fuse has been blowing, so I'm thinking (hoping) the short is restricted to one of the areas you mention.

I have the service manual in PDF format, which I'll take along with me for him to review.

Not knowing zip about electrical systems, let along the spaghetti inside the Crossfire, I'm still wondering if the "Console Switch Group" might be the culprit, only because in addition to that one fuse, I had the issue with the 15A under the hood (#36 I believe) regarding the FOB transmitting the lock/unlock codes. But I'm just guessing there. Nothing ever seems as easy as it should be....

Thanks again! I'll post an update Sunday or Monday after seeing what he can find. It may require the dealer after all, but as I mentioned he's great with electrical systems in cars, so I'm hopeful (or I wouldn't be making the drive up there...)

Mark

 

UPDATE:

Well, I'm back from my brother's. We believe we got it fixed, but what ended up being the problem...well, here's the story.

Drove it up to my brother's on Saturday morning. We took it to his shop (he works for a boat dealership) and he double-checked the battery with both a digital load tester and an older carbon pile tester (I think I have that term right). The digital showed no issues, while the carbon pile showed borderline. Still, that battery wasn't the issue.

Then he asked me if I could reproduce the short. Ummm, no. The dreaded "fuse 4" hadn't blown since Thursday afternoon. It was now Saturday morning.

So he started pouring through the service manual, and checking the various connectors and wires. Over the course of 4 hours, my car was opened up and peeled apart, prodding and prying here and there. I was sitting off to the side (more in his way than helpful) watching in horror as another panel was pulled off.

When he was finished, and the car all put back together....he had found nothing. Zip. Everything looked fine, checked out okay, crud, crud, crud.

We returned to his house and had a barbecue. After dinner I needed to get gas before the trip back home the next morning. He climbed in (he's 6-5 and huge, ex-Marine and years of working as a car and marine mechanic), so he barely fit. We took off, made a right turn, blinker working fine, then made a left turn and "pop" - the fuse blew. His eyes lit up. It had happened again. We replaced the fuse and he had me drive all over the place, turn signals on even if I wasn't turning, just trying to get it to do it again....

Later that night, we were standing in his driveway, the sun just about set, and he said, "Give me your keys." He climbed into the passenger seat - which has even less clearance than the passenger side, and he turned the key, turned on the blinker, and was about to start the car, when "POP". It blew again. He froze. I replaced the fuse. The blinkers came back on. He barely tapped the clutch again and "POP".

The clutch????

He climbed out, said "Don't touch the clutch or the steering wheel!", grabbed flashlights and tools and began taking apart the panels under the steering wheel, for the second time that day. Once he had everything off, he turned the key while kneeling outside the car, turned on the blinkers, and tapped the clutch with his hand.

Nothing. "Aw, no..." He moved some wires around. Still nothing. Back to the service manual. More tracing. Still nothing. He sat there in the darkness, confunded. "What is different between when it was blowing and now..."

A light appeared over his head. He slowly climbed back into the seat, turned the key, turned on the signal, tapped the clutch..."POP".

He smiled and looked up at me. "Notice what is different?"

I did. "You're sitting in the seat....but it couldn't be the seat, could it?"

He mumbled more to himself than me, "Now where am I applying pressure?" Another fuse went in - we must have burned through a dozen all told - and without touching the clutch, he began touching the seat, the steering wheel, the side of the consol-"POP!"

We both held our breath. Another fuse. Blinking. He applied pressure to the side of the center console, on the dark plastic right the the left of the radio...where my knee would be. "POP!"

You have got to be kidding me.

He had an evil grin on his face, then it fell. "You don't happen to have the special keys needed to pull this radio out, do you?" he asked me. I looked at him with a "look who you're talking to. I'm lucky to be able to find my car keys" expression.

He replaced tjhe 15a fuse with a 20a, and applied pressure again. The blinker stopped. Then he let up, and it started blinking again. Repeat. We had a tester. He went back under the dash and removed the side panel by the gas pedal. he could see behind the radio as well as could feel around.

"Ah-Hah!" he said. "The wiring harness from the radio is pinched on the side here. Who put this in last?"

The last time the radio had been removed and replaced was nearly 18 months ago, by the dealer when they fixed some faulty wiring that prevented the cigarette lighter and glove compartment light from working.

"Well," he said, "They obviously just jammed it back in there, and over time, it started pinching some wires...but good luck telling them that or getting them to fix anything."

He was able to move the harness back around the back of the radio, but without being able to remove the radio, couldn't find the actual damaged wire (or wires) and fix the problem. However, once he moved the wires, the issue went away. No more short.

As he was putting everything back together, it made sense. The fuse had only blew when I was turning left....when my knee would be pressing right on the spot to brace myself. I stood up against the back of the car and pretended to turn left, and sure enough, my lower body and leg pressed against the side of the car automatically. And as my brother was so crammed in the driver's side, his right leg pressed up against the side when he tried to move to tap the clutch with his left foot.

So my turn signal fuse was blowing because my knee was pressing up against the side console, caused by a pinched wire from the radio's harness....

Wha??? I don't think I would have ever guessed that would be the cause. He laughed and said, "And imagine how many hours of labor your dealer would have charged you to find something that took them, in the end, 15 minutes to fix." Yeah, I owe my brother big.

He plans to order the keys for the radio, and will pull it and fix it properly in the near future. But right now, it hasn't blown....

What a weekend.

Mark

 

Just goes to show another story of a dealership screw up.
We need to go back to the days when people cared about there work.
Piece work and flat rate doesn't make good repairs.
Glad you got the car fixed, buy your brother a good meal. He deserves it.

 

Reading through this mess, I was going to ask if you had ever had an aftermarket radio in the car! Glad to see you solved the problem.

 

Woah...I felt like I was there...

Good job, this is a good one for the archives.