Hi All,

The battery on the key fob of my car alarm died today and I could not disable the alarm. I needed to drive the car somewhere today and I could manually open the door - but the alarm was going off. Also, I was not able to start the engine.

My question is this: I keep a spare key in my wallet incase i lock my keys in the car or lose my keys. Is there any way to disable the alarm or turn off the alarm with out the key fob? What if I was out and I lost my entire set of keys but then had the spare key... how could I disable the alarm and start the car?

Thanks

 

on the brain of the alarm, or near the alarm there should be some buttons that are used to reset the alarm. If not, then maybe you might have to dissconnest it entirely, try removing the battery cable.
good luck

 

Many alarms have a kill/valet switch near the dash. Holding this in and starting the car with a key generally shuts the alarm off. Is your alarm system configured with something like this?

 

Jeff and gsr2k thanks for the tips.

Actually, I didn't know about the valet mode a while back - I thought the alarm was actually busted and was in the market looking for a new one - turns out the alarm was in valet mode the whole time!

So basically what you're saying is if the alarm is going off, I can just hit the valet switch to the left or to the right and the alarm will turn off?

I don't have the car with me at the moment but hopefully that's the answer!

... but if it is, a thief can easily disarm the alarm... and the starter kill!

 

Well, you usally have to do a combination of things - like press the button and start the car at the same time. Something like that. You can't just get in, tap the switch and kill the alarm, becasue, as you pointed out, that would be really easy to defeat. Sometimes this switch is hidden and where it's hidden usually depends on the type of car and the shop that did the installation. Call them and ask where they typically hide the switch if its not in plain sight.

I can start my car with the alarm going off - to silence it, I need to start the car with the button depressed.