Chevrolet Malibu Forums banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

Panic alarm goes off randomly

49K views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  Starship 
#1 ·
I have a '05 Maxx that is loaded with all the electronic goodies. Car has 39k miles. In the last two week the alarm has started to go off randomly. It beeps for less than a minute before it stops. I let it go off twice at max before I go out and unlock the car which seems to stop it permanently. (I live in the city and the car sits right under my neighbors bedroom windows.) The last time it happened the DIC said "check dad" the next morning when I started it. The dealer cannot tell me what "check dad" is, no record of it in any literature. I also noticed that the alarm warning light on the dash ( the little yellow padlock icon) is blinking much faster. The dealer ran all of the scans and found nothing. They think it may be a sensor on a door or the hood or hatch that is going bad. Now my remote start does not work.

Anyone have any ideas?
 
#2 ·
The security light blinking more rapidly would mean not everything is closed and locked. It certainly sounds like the hood switch. Does anything get displayed in the DIC when you press the remote start button? They should be able to track down the problem easy this time. Also, the original random alarm may have been from the hood switch going bad as well.
 
#3 ·
Starship is right on! The remote start will not function if the hood is not latched (or if it "thinks" it isn't due to a bad switch). That is the best place to look based on your symptoms (like Starship said!), and because the hood switch is out in the elements, whereas the door switches are inside the doors and better protected.

If your display says "check dad" then you may want to see if your father has a spare remote and is pressing the panic button!

Just kidding!
 
#4 ·
That "check dad" puzzle has been bothering me since it just doesn't mesh.:( Mike, I think what you saw was "CHECK DAB" as in "Digital Audio Broadcasting," i.e., satellite radio. It must have taken a few seconds longer than usual to get a lock on the satellite. A heavy concentration of water vapors in the atmosphere can reek havoc with the satellite reception. Was it raining or very cloudy that morning? If that was the case, the DIC message probably had nothing to do with your original problem.
 
#5 ·
The conventional wisdom is that there is a sensor bad somewhere that causes the alarm to go off. The problem is that the tech's at my Chevy dealer have scanned the car twice and found nothing. I haven't used the remote start in awhile so I don't know how long it has been out. I use it frequently during the Chicago winters but the weather has been mild for quite awhile. The car was scanned to look for the alarm problem and no fault was found. The next day it was 90 degrees I had to retreive my sick wife from the hospital and I wanted to pre-cool the car for her and the remote start didn't work. So it went from no problems scanned to non functioning remote start in less than 24 hours.

Where is the hood switch located? I poked around under the hood but it wasn't obvious to me. The first time the alarm started going off was after a 3 hour road trip on I 55 from Chi to Springfield in a driving rain storm. It has gone off on perfectly dry sunny days since then so I sort of rulled out water as the culprit.

Oh BTY there is no message on the DIC when the remote start is pushed. The turn signals flash and that's all.
 
#6 ·
The switch should be right around the hood latch. There should be some wiring that terminates at a connector in that area. I think you can test it by locking with the key fob and then popping the hood (from the inside, of course). The alarm should go off. If not, it could mean the hood switch or wiring or something else. Then, try opening a door. If there's no alarm either, then the alarm is not arming (it's probably waiting for everything to be latched). Then, the next step is figuring out where the disconnect/discrepancy is.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top