I’ve got a puzzle here, and I hope someone can suggest some remedies short of calling up AAA and paying to get our car hauled to the nearest service station. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Recently my wife lost our set of car keys that had the alarm remote on it. We had a backup key (but no alarm remote) and we figured that was okay, since we never use the alarm anyways. Then she left the lights on overnight and so the car died. And then we tried to jump it… except as soon as it gets any juice it immediately starts using it up flashing the lights since evidently the alarm is being triggered (it would be honking the horn, but we disabled that lovely feature of the alarm a while ago).
Before my wife lost the keys, I used to just click “off” on the remote to stop the alarm and jump the car. Now, I’m not sure what to do. We sat there for several minutes revving the engine of the other car, but we weren’t able to get the Camry’s engine to turn over. Maybe we just didn’t wait long enough?
I also read about an alarm toggle switch under the dash, and sure enough there’s a toggle switch just to the right of the hood release latch, but toggling the switch has absolutely no effect at all.
All in all I’d like to way to, ideally:
-preferably kill the alarm forever so I can jump the car now and not have to worry about it ever again.
-or find a way to overcome the power drain from the flashing lights and jump the car so that I can get it a service station where they can disable the alarm
Any ideas?
Try locking and unlocking the driver’s side door, passenger’s side door and trunk with the key. One of these may disarm the alarm.
With the car battery dead, find the alarm box and cut (or unplug) the power, remove the offending unit. No more alarm.
Not that easy. Toyota requires the module to ground the starter relay. Simply removing it will not fix this. The wires must also be jumped properly to restore function. A wiring diagram is required to successfully remove this alarm system.
Funny tidbit… but we had a new set of keys cut a while ago due to some sort of electrical/mechanical problem with the steering column and the keys that start the car will not lock or unlock any of the doors or the trunk.
At this point I’m thinking we may just set up the jumper cables, rev the other car for 10 minutes or so and see if we can’t overcome the power drain from the alarm long enough to get the engine going and get it into a service shop.
Thanks for the suggestion.