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arrrhgg......
the alarm fitted to my car is giving me grief to no end. Firstly The wiring has been butchered savagely underneath the dashboard. it constantly falls onto my feet. Recently its developed this thing when i corner a hard left......the doors lock. I can live with that but then i can't seem to open the drivers door. Most of the time i can unlock it from the outside with a key......but occasionally I have to let it sit there for a few hrs before it allows me to unlock it. The alarm also has a fuel cut out & auto entry with it. So Is it feasible, to actually rip out the wiring under the dash & start again.

I know less than nothing when it comes to electrics......I wouldn't like to go chasing a bug.


i guess I'm just preparing myself.......I hate electrics.....paint job is next......but this is becoming a growing concern.

I wouldn't recommend trying to remove and refit a whole loom or section of, espescially if yor electrical capabilities are as bad as you suggest.

Have you considered finding teh control box for the alarm and just trying to unplug it?

no i haven't.......I was thinking of just getting the wirirng out of a wrecked MX5 & then replcae my wriring with that.

Not as simple as that?

StanTheMan wrote:no i haven't.......I was thinking of just getting the wirirng out of a wrecked MX5 & then replcae my wriring with that.

Not as simple as that?

Well it is...

But then you find that there are slightly different options in each car, or you forget to plug in a plug, and spend days if not weeks trying to find that plug, then you get it all running, take a hard left and your doors suddenly lock...

I asked mania about it for my car (as ive got about 3 gremlins living in my car) and they said that yes, it is possible, but as sean said the wiring looms differed from car to car, so one would have to find a loom identical to my original one...then comes the joy of removing the entire interior to change it over

mmmmm......right......food for thought then.

So it's not possible to remove the alarm and then patch things up with a soldering iron?
Anytime I've ever removed an alarm I have fixed it up like this and it almost becomes factory again. You just have to be careful

yep I'm sure its possible......I just wanted it to be clean. There are a lot of cut wires to which i have absolutely no idea where they lead to or what they belong to. The stereo harness has also been butchered. But by the sounds of it......its the only option I have.

If it was my car I wouldn't bother replacing the entire loom, lots of work, instead just follow the wires one by one and find out which ones have had the insulation stripped and are shorting out (hence the doors locking because of left turns) then use some trusty electrical tape and all fixed
it could cost you $200 to get a car electrician to go through the whole loom using this method and fix the problem, or alot more to have a new loom inserted. find a good electrician who will do it at a fixed price quote otherwise it will cost alot if you pay by the hour. I had problems with my other car because the high-beams were on whenever the car was on, the relay had fried and fused wires together where they go through the firewall, took 1 day to get fixed dropped off car in the morning picked up that night no problems since (over a year ago now)

Stan, don't even think about changing the loom.
Unless you have completely stripped the car of the engine and all the interior and trimmings.
There are wi0res running in places you would never know about until everything has been stripped out.
Then if you strip it out, it's a huge task to put it back in.

I reckon SM has the right idea.
Try and chase every wire you can find and fix them all one by one.
However, the problems are probably being caused by some wires you will never find but that's life.

The only time I've ever really heard about people who change their looms are when a car is being completely stripped for restoration and the 40+ year old wires are truly stuffed.

Sell it and buy a blue one!

Take a trip south mate
You will need about 3 hours of spare time.

Leave your loom in there and get another alarm (if that one gives you the poops)

Craig wrote:Sell it and buy a blue one!

I trrhink you'll see me in a SP way before I purchase a blue Craigy. LOL

Take a trip south mate Cool
You will need about 3 hours of spare time.

Leave your loom in there and get another alarm (if that one gives you the poops)

I was trying to get rid of alarm.......not get a new one.

you don't have to put another one in.

But you don't have to take out your loom either.
The alarms removal should be reversible.
Getting comfortable under the dash is a tricky experience thats all.

Oh and your internal wiring loom is cable tied into the dash. The only way to replace it is to remove the dash!

Ask me how i know

yea I've had the dash off before.....May just do that anyway when removing the Alarm.


I was expecting the remove the dash. I was kind of hoping the harness/loom was easier to replace than than it is. But sounds like its a bit of a no-go zone. I'm kind of glad I asked.

But in hindsight......I asked about painting patchy years ago......I got the same response. resprays are the done thing nowdays. So are turbos.
gawd when i had the money in 1998 no one would go near turbos for MX5's..... were just not set up for this kind of tuning in Australia was the response


I may ask about the electrical harness again in a few years time.