Has anyone experience with Clifford alarm systems?

[TypeS 4 Tea]

So another 300KM round trip a few weeks back and then thwarted by the bonnet which has seized solid and won't open. So we added some oil to hopefully free things and will try again to take a look at whether or not the car will start.

There is a potential spanner in the works however, to my knowledge the car has a Clifford 4th Gen Concept 100 alarm system in it. From the tiny bits of information I could find online, it appears that the battery being dead on the car for many years is potentially going to be a problem.

Hoping someone here can give me some advise on what if anything I might need to do to get this working again. I fear I won't be able to de-immobilise the car without doing something to restore/reset the alarm system.

[Scott560]

Generally, the best way to avoid any alarm problems is to completely remove the alarm. They get old, can fail, or the wiring to them can fail.

You can't just rip it out like an ogre, a bit of finesse is required. Generally very few modifications (if any) are made to the existing car wiring, so removal tends to be fiddly, but electrically very easy.

Find the Alarm Sounder under the bonnet, remove it and trace the wires. Once you find the alarm brain (normally under the dash or behind the radio kind of area), start unravelling the harness and slowly start to remove it. It will most likely meetup with many wires in the drivers footwell fusebox area.

Most of the smaller sense/power wires will just be Tee'd into the car harness. These can be cut off and covered over with tape. Depending on who installed it, they might be soldered, chockblocked or just straight up twisted together and held with tape. Be sure to recover any loose conductors with tape again as you don't want to be blowing any fuses whilst trying to fault find, that will only make your day worse than it already is.

Some of the fatter wires, these will most likely be 'intercepting' the traditional ignition power wires. These might lead up to the ignition switch or the multiplug on the fuse box. It should be easy to tell if they are 'inline'. If they are, you will need to re-join the existing wires together appropriately. This can be hard given the location, but generally the installer will install wherever was easiest to intercept the wires, so rectification shouldn't be terrible.

If you don't fancy removing the alarm, you can always track down the instruction manual or fitters manual. New batteries in the fobs and try pressing lock or unlock many times in a row. Sometimes 10 or 20 presses on lock or unlock will cause the receiver to resysnc with the seed value in the transmitter and maybe get you back on track.

My advice, rip it out if you are able as its just another variable causing trouble.

[Drax]

i couldn't agree more, any old aftermarket immobilsers or alarms - remove them asap! done it to all of my preludes ive had as they are just a massive PITA

[TypeS 4 Tea]

Complete removal would really be a last resort, apart from anything else without some sort of alarm/immobiliser I can’t insure it. So ripping it out would inevitably mean replacing it with another.

[Scott560]

You can insure it without the alarm, but I think it just means claims for theft are not allowed. I don't have one fitted (it had an alarm fitted but I removed it after it liked to prevent me starting and randomly beeping the horn).

You should be able to resync the fobs and the rolling code by ensuring everything is working as best you can and then simply press the lock button a billion times and then unlock a similar number of times. This is the defacto way of initiating a resync across many different types of remote alarm fobs (not just car alarms).

I haven't seen an old car alarm yet that prevented me from starting it (but certainly caused trouble or just proved a pain in the arse that warranted the removal).

Truth be told, if the fobs and car are without battery, it will most likely work straight off the bat as the rolling code start point will be the same for the receiver and transmitter. They generally only get out of sync when one is without power (so loses its counter position) , or when the fob is out of range and the button pressed too many times.

Where is the car based? Maybe someone local can assist (either technically or logistically/emotionally!)

[Vtecmec]

A steering lock is an immobiliser.

[wurlycorner]

Last time I insured my UKDM and told them it had a toad cat 1 system in it (it has, from before I bought it) the quote went up - I'm not kidding!
I asked them to take it off the quote and they said 'we can only do that now, if you remove the alarm system from the car'.