after my shift tonight, i unlocked my Calais and to my disbelief the factory alarm gos off....I've never used the alarm since i got the car, so i just leave the remotes and override keys at home. I ended up having to walk 50 mins each way back home to pick up the override key ......not the sort of thing ya wanna do at 3 in the morning...now im keeping the override key in the glove box. who else has this happened to? also WTF causes it?? cuz all i did was flick the central locking slider to lock all doors as i always do when im leaving the car. Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

How about keeping ur override key on ur keys with you? Instead of some lowlife jumping into ur car one day, and going, "HEY, override key here! no need to worry about this alarm going off" just kinda a little safer... ush

Choice bro.

haha we spent about 5 hours one night trying to work out why my car wouldnt start (just had a full redback alarm installed earlier that day), we checked all the fuses and the car wasnt getting power to the ignition or fuel pump, we pretty much completely rewired the fuse box in frustration of trying to work out what was going on, completely uninstalled the redback alarm and 3 points of immobilisation before for some reason one of us just *touched* the factory lock in the glovebox (which had never been used before) and all the doors made a slight clicking sound like the central locking was reacting, then bingo, power to all ports.. and the car started. Weird weird weird

lol yeah i've had problems with the key switch in the glovebox when it happened to me i had already had an aftermarket alarm installed but my problem was the wire conections to the back of the keylock some days my car would start and other days it wouldnt one day it started and i let it warm up then i got in and shut the door and it died and wouldnt start again some days id be warming it up and all i had to do was stomp my foot and it would die. so i replaced both fuel pumps the cas and the clip that goes into cas triple checked everything i could think of still couldnt get it so left it at my auto elec for two days and all they could come up with was 'maybe the cas' so there went a few dollars so very pissed off at this time then someone mentioned the key lock so in ten minutes and no dollars i by passed the key lock by cutting the wires an joining them up. be a goo place to wire in kill switch i was not happy after all the **** i had done that i fixed it in five min for free so theres my story of the crappy factory alarms Some original photos have not been recovered yet.

lol yeah we did that to mine as well!

i went to start my car one day, and it started beeping, and im think wtf... and i thoguht its not my alarm, must be the calais one, luckly i had read the manual and looked at what hte key was for lol

Yeah me too <groan> The keyswitch in the alarm fails after many years of vibration, it can even be intermittent when on bumpy country roads, its a real pain. One day I will have to remove/replace/service it but cant be fussed taking out the whole dash to do it - yet Anyone have simple procedure to remove it ?

i just lifted the dash a little about 10cm from the lock is a clip so cut the wires pull the clip out and just rejoin the wires to themselves and push the clip back in takes about five minutes i didnt pull the dash apart i just lifted it a little at the glovebox end

Thanks 79MKB, I'll have to look at this as it glitched !again! just a couple of hours after I sent my last post - had to wiggle the key several times back and forth to get it to stay on. Fortunately I have the little lights from the ECU raised so I can see when they come on before trying to start but, there is a 10-15 sec delay from the time you turn off the ignition, fiddle the keyswitch then turn it back on to see the red and green leds on the ECU acknowledge you can start the engine <shrug> Have to work out where all the bolts/screws are for the dash on the left hand side, been so long since I looked at it in any detail, is that detail for the dash in service manual volume 5 by any chance ? btw: Have a right rear chrome strip somewhere, I took all my strips off and cleaned off all the clips, seems a bit neater to me without them but then my paint job doesnt look all that good, the chrome strips would look better on a car that gets polished more often - not like mine <sigh> WTB: VL Service Manuals Volumes 3 and 5

Yeah i've had many problems with that little keyswitch in the glove box and seeing as my calais is apart, I've been sorting out the spaghetti mess of wiring under the dash the last couple of days.... I removed the factory alarm module (seeing as I already have an aftermarket ecu) and I'll be removing the keyswitch too. All you have to do is bridge the 2 pink wires and leave the 2 black ones disconnected.

when my mate got his car i found a key in the glove box and a lock so i put it in and turned it and the car cut out at 100kph it was so funny. i have a lot of problems with alarms ****ing up at work from flat batterys and **** i pull them out all the time there so poorly built