The other week someone broke the driver’s side door lock on my 1998 F150 (jammed a screwdriver into the keyhole and forced it) - it doesn’t appear that they did anything inside the vehicle as nothing was disturbed or taken, glove box and console weren’t opened, hood wasn’t popped, etc. I assume that either the alarm went off or somebody came by and the crooks shut the door and left.
I had the lock replaced. Once I drove my truck home I found that the OEM alarm would go off almost every time I unlocked & opened the driver’s side door. Not 100% but 80-90%. I’ve owned the vehicle 7-8 years and this has never happened before.
I took the truck back to the dealer and they checked it out. The service manager said that replacing the lock could not have anything to do with the alarm behavior. I’m not doubting the guy’s knowledge but it seems awful funny that this was never an issue until now.
I’m the second owner and I purchased it from a Ford dealership. The truck did not come with a remote. The service manager just left me a message saying that the alarm arms a few minutes after the door is locked and a remote is necessary to deactivate the alarm so that I can open the door without the light & sound show.
Does this sound reasonable? I’m thinking that either the crooks damaged something which is causing this or perhaps the service department left a wire loose or other error when they replaced my lock. If it’s fixable I’m happy to have it fixed, and I certainly won’t blame the service department for not catching a problem that wasn’t apparent when I brought the truck in. On the other hand if this was caused by their work I think that they ought to fix it.
I did do a quick check online and replacement OEM remotes are cheap - $25 new, less than $10 used. If that’s what I need I’m sure it’ll be cheaper than buying it from the dealership, but I’m confused as to WHY this behavior has cropped up all of a sudden.
Anyone have any idea whether it’s “impossible” that replacing the door lock could result in this problem?
Well, replacing the mechanical parts of the lock are unlikely to have done this (I am not a lock smith or a mechanic, so I don’t know for sure), but the part about the remote is true for a lot of cars I have owned – usually you have to lock with the remote for the alarm to activate, but in at least one car, locking with the key would activate the alarm in a few minutes as well (which could only be deactivated with the remote).
I’ve certainly heard of people disabling their alarms after their remote stopped working/was lost rather than getting a new remote. Maybe when you were getting your lock replaced they saw the alarm unplugged (fuse blown, etc. etc.), assumed that was part of the damage and plugged it back in?
If the vehicle was in ‘passive arm’ mode, then the alarm should activate every time the door is opened, other than reentry within the countdown period. Try to get some specifics about how the factory system is supposed to operate, perhaps from a different dealer than the one who worked on the vehicle.
I would say you have a fairly strong cause and effect case there.
One thing you could try is disconnecting the battery for an hour or so. That may reset the alarm’s behavior. However, if the problem is something like groman suggested, that won’t help.
It’s possible that the old lock assembly was faulty in not sending a signal to the alarm module and was never fixed because the previous owner didn’t care about it, and now that it has been restored it’s sending the signal. However, my info idicates that unlocking the door with the key should disarm the alarm, which apparently is not happening. This raises the question of whether using a remote’s “unlock” button will disarm the alarm - it’s conceivable the door lock is sending both “lock” and “unlock” signals but a glitch in the alarm module is not always sensing the “unlock.”
As a workaround, my info also states that the alarm can be armed by using the power door lock switch or the remote. Since it doesn’t list manually locking the door by pressing the lock button down or using the key, perhaps one or both of those methods can be used to lock the door without arming the alarm.
Thanks for the replies everyone. I got a call back from the service department just a few minutes ago and they were able to replicate the problem there. They did some more poking around and found that the antitheft sensor in the door was working erratically and causing this problem. It isn’t reliably telling the alarm system that the door was unlocked “properly”.
This at least makes sense - the first fellow I spoke to yesterday said that there’s no antitheft sensor or part of the alarm system in the door which really didn’t make much sense to me.
It’s about $260 for them to fix it (including the part which they’ll have to order) or I can do it myself - the part is about $120-$150 and they said it’s pretty straightforward to replace; pop the interior door panel off so I can get at the lock cylinder and the sensor is right there.
Workaround is to unlock the passenger side door and hit the power lock button to open the driver’s side door. That tells the alarm that the door was unlocked legitimately.
Total bill now looking to be $450 plus my time because some jackass shoved a screwdriver in the lock. They need to put a more rugged locking mechanism on car doors…if it costs an extra $10 to put the equivalent of a Master Lock cylinder in place of the chintzy current cylinder I think that’d be worth it. Grumble grumble grumble.