Cobra Alarm Fault

[pwilmo]

I have had an alarming week with the Cobra Car Security, factory fitted to a Fiat Ducato.
I thought others might find interest if they are having or have had the same problem.
Out of the blue one morning at 08:00 the alarm went off, then after a panicked turn off on the key fob I reset/locked it. It went off again 3-4 hours later. Various slamming of doors and PTFE spray seemed to cure it ... until 6 hours later. For 3 days the alarm has intermittently gone off.
Living in a built up area I suppose I was worried of the disturbance to the neighbours, so I guess I was not taking notice of the flashing fault sequences and no set signals.
Any way, I eventually managed 1 day of peace by unlocking the motorhome on the fob and starting the ignition, running the engine for a few minutes and then turning off the engine and leaving everything unlocked. The motorhome was blockaded in my driveway by my locked and alarmed car.
The habitat door wiring/sensor was the suspect as it has always needs a jolly good slam to close ( 2006 Bessacarr 745E ). Not relishing the job of undoing all the innards of the habitat door I looked for a temporary measure to disable the alarm via the Emergency Override Button.
Is there one fitted? Hell only knows.. I can't find the damn thing, but on my search inside the bonnet I spied a cruddy looking, worse for wear, bonnet alarm microswitch.
As a temporary fault diagnosis measure I pressed the switch into the down position, as if the bonnet was pressing it down and I drilled through the switch body from one side to the other with a fine drill. I pushed a paper clip all way through the drill hole to keep the spring loaded switch in fully down position.
Hey Presto, it was a faulty bonnet alarm switch/sensor after all.
When my Amazon replacement switch arrives I may well fabricate a little weather gaurd as the swich position is at mercy from all the snot and weather that comes through into the engine compartment.
Now as you know, after the fix is done along comes Harry Hindsight with plenty to say.
IF ... I had searched Motorhome fun for bonnet alarm switch, there's info there.
IF ... if I had took note of the alarm memory flashings it would have told me ( Cobra manual: 3 blinks = bonnet has been opened
However, when the alarm is singing out in a built up area at 00:30 your attention is not counting blinks, but turning the blinking thing off!
Hope you Funsters enjoy this story.

 

[Burgo]

I had a Clifford top range alarm on a heavily accessorised L200 Warrior years ago. That had a dodgy bonnet plunger switch fitted which shorted in heavy rain at the most inconvenient & /or embarrassing times possible. Since then those plunger type switches have always been my prime suspect when fitted to anything.

 

[Benjii]

I have a cobra alarm system and in Burgos the van would not start.
After 14 years the system became faulty, the key start wire red/black had to be stripped of the connections to/from the cobra box and the white supply socket disconnected under the dash.

 

[CazPaul]

Alarm systems are a real pain in the backside, wouldn't it be lovely if we lived in a world where nobody nicked owt and insurance companies didn't insist on alarms and trackers going wrong, draining batteries, cost.
Its nice to dream.

 

[Hettie's Crew]

We had the same fault, and did post it on here some time ago, though where I wouldn’t know. We still have the same switch but cleaned it, greased it and always make a point of shutting the bonnet firmly now. I also adjusted the position of the plunger.
The way we can tell if it’s not working properly is when we set the alarm the two beeps are followed by a very short extra beep.
Two beeps ok, an extra short beep means there’s a fault, so we open and close the bonnet again.

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