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| image source: 6abcactionnews.com |
Was it haunted or possessed? My '96 Explorer was a great used car buy, for quite a while. Then it happened.
I would lock the car using the power door lock button as I exited. I would hear all the door locks click. Then I would return overnight, or just a short time later, and find the doors were all unlocked!
How could that be happening? I couldn't be accidentally activating the keyless system since I only had one working fob, and my Wife used that one. I wondered if one of my neighbors had a remote keyless entry device with a similar frequency. Perhaps when they activated their's it would open up my car's locks. But how could that be? My Explorer is a '96 model, all my neighbors drive much newer cars that are only a couple of years old. I couldn't imagine that the frequencies could be that close.
Then I came up with the theory that someone's TV remote might be doing the same thing. But my car was parked in the street at the curb. I was pretty certain that I couldn't control my TV while standing outside the house in the street!
Maybe it's due to being activated by someone's cell phone use. That theory was also flawed, since it had started happening after I'd had the car about a year and cell phones have been everywhere for years.
I'd just got used to the fact that I never knew when I would come back and find the car unlocked, so I just didn't keep any valuables in it. It's an old car so I hope any potential thief would be tempted instead by my neighbor's hybrid and electric cars. I just hoped that I didn't end up finding some homeless guy curled up asleep in the cargo area.
Whenever I drove my other cars I would pass the Explorer cruising slowly by, looking for the tell tale raised door lock button!
I had plans to do something about it, of course. I figured that I could disconnect the door lock motors and then even if the remote "wanted" to unlock the door, it's plan would be foiled. Naturally I hadn't gotten around to it yet. I didn't relish the thought of pulling all those door panels.
It was all kind of weird, like the car had a mind of it's own. There were times when I locked the door and walked away and I could hear the doors unlocking as I crossed the street! I would go back and relock them, and sometimes they would unlock again and sometimes I would return the next morning and find them secure.
It was very disconcerting to think that my car had a mind of it's own!
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| Were the door locks just the beginning? |
Sometimes I could hear the locking/unlocking cycle go on several times, and I would just ignore it.
I did an online search and found that this problem was not uncommon. One guy took his car to the dealer, but of course the problem didn't manifest itself. The dealer told him that he might have activated the keyless system by accident or something in his pocket might have pressed the button. That guy returned another time to the dealer, who again couldn't duplicate the problem. He subtly suggested that the problem might all be in his head!
Luckily they went for a ride together and the dealer saw the locks go into a cycle where they were locking and unlocking themselves.
My problem reached a point where I found that the battery was dead one morning. Now it could just have been sudden, without warning, battery failure. I have noticed that this is now the normal mode of failure. I remember back in the day, that the batteries would go dead when asked to play the radio for a long time with the motor off, or they would start to crank the motor over slowly.
I checked the battery with my multimeter and found that it was dead. I jumped it and ran the car for awhile. I found that the charging system was putting out enough juice. So I parked the car and disconnected the battery cable.
I returned from a ten day vacation and tested the battery when I got back. It still held over twelve volts. When I reconnected the cable the car started fine. I decided that the car must have gone into an extended locking/unlocking cycle that eventually ran the battery down.
I had found a video showing how to replace the keyless remote receiving unit on YouTube. I plan to disconnect the unit and see if that will prevent the system from unlocking the doors. I will have to remove the inner quarter panel cover to access the module, so I deviseded a temporary plan.
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| I hadn't used one of these in years! Much easier than constantly disconnecting the terminal clamp. |
I installed a manual battery disconnect knob on the negative terminal. Whenever I park the car for a long period I will pop the hood, lock the power locks, then open the hood and disconnect the battery. Now the car can't unlock itself!
This isn't a bad idea, although I don't expect that my Wife will want to go through this process, but it will help me to cope in the near future until I have some time to fuss with the module. I can also use this period to monitor the health of the battery as in how well is it holding a charge.
Besides I've got three quarters of a tank of gas in the tank I need to use up!
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