tricky electrical problem?

Hi,

I have a 2001 LW300 with ~120K miles(long commute+travel)

Today, while driving on the highway, my car horn beeped by itself a few
times. When it happened, I kinda assumed it was another car even though
there was no reason for someone to beep. It was just a couple of short
beeps.. Nothing else noticed on the rest of the drive to work.

On the way home, again on the highway, the door locks started clicking,
At first I thought it was an electrical clicking in the radio, but it
happened again. It didn't happen long enough for me to see if the lock
knobs were actually moving.

After the car had been home for a while(~1 hour?), I went to run an
errand and the car beeped a couple of short times just after starting
and then in about 1 mile, the door locks clicked a few times again.
Nothing happened for the rest of the trip...

It seems as if there's probably some wire chafed or chewed by something
(I do see acorns in my engine on occasion), but I'm wondering if someone
could give me an idea of where to look since apparently the horn and the
door locks are involved.
I'll take a quick look in the AM to see if there's anything obvious, but
any help regarding locations to concentrate on would be appreciated.

Thanks,
J

 

For the horn I'd suspect the wire coming out of the steering column,
but that wouldn't explain the door locks. Possibly the two are on
the same fuse, but that's about the only connection I can think of.
(Or does this model have the feature that automatically locks the
doors when you start moving?)

Whatever, the problem is probably in the passenger compartment
(behind or below the dash), not under the hood.

I just spent $300 getting a short fixed behind the dash of my wife's
SL1. A bracket had worn through a wiring harness.

 

This post actually makes a nice segue for a question that arose with my car
today.

Today I had the alternator replaced on my 95 SL1 with 115K on it. I left
the shop drove around and everything was fine. When I got home I locked the
doors and they immediately unlocked, locked them again and same thing
happened and then again 2 or 3 more times before they stayed locked.

A few hours later I got to wondering if it was just the driver's side door
that was doing that so I went out to test the lock switch on the passenger
side. The lock on the passenger side operated just fine. I took another
look at the switch on the drivers door while out there and that was working
fine also at this point.

I don't understand how replacing the alternator could be related to the door
locks suddenly acting funny. It could just be a coincidence that the locks
started acting funny with in 90 minutes of changing the alternator, does
anyone have any ideas?

Mark.

 

I can't help with your alternator question, but a friend did bring up
the remote door lock key fob controls both the horn and the door locks,
so we were thinking maybe there's some intermittent short inside there
or maybe that the receiver that gets the signal has a problem(short,
malfunction)....

 

i had the same thing happen, '01 L300. turned out to be a dirty/bad
ground. it was a main body ground just behind the abs unit.

 

I can't help with your alternator question, but a friend did bring up the
remote door lock key fob controls both the horn and the door locks, so we
were thinking maybe there's some intermittent short inside there or maybe
that the receiver that gets the signal has a problem(short, malfunction)..."

I have electric locks but I don't have any kind of remote keyless entry
system, or locks that are supposed to automatically lock when the car starts
moving.

Last night I did a google search of this newsgroup and mangaed to find a few
post's where people mentioned simialr problems. They were pretty old but
still relevent.

Anyway these posts mentioned that when the key and/or the lock start to wear
down it is possible to remove the key from the lock with out it being in a
full 90 degree postion. If it is too far out of postion then the lock may
not be fully disengaged causing the electric locks to start operating on
their own.

As it turns out about 2 weeks ago I first noticed that the lock on the
outside of the drivers door is a little off center. My locks behavied
normally today and I have not noticed any other weird electirical problems
so I think that it was just a coencidence that they started acting funny
only an hour or two after putting a new altanator on the car. I will keep
an eye on it and just make sure when unlocking the door with my key that I
have the locking cyliander in the correct postion.

Mark.

 

Don't think it has anything to do with the alternator. What I
suspect is that your ignition switch is sticking and it thinks the
key is still in. On some cars (not sure if Saturn is one) this
causes the locks to automatically unlock when you slam the
driver-side door. (A safety feature to keep you from locking your
keys in.)

 

Both the horn and the locks??? If so, I'll start looking for ground
connections that look iffy

Thanks...

 

How many main grounds are there to check? I brought the car in today
and they said they couldn't find the problem(it was going off
intermittently all the way to work, but not from work to the
dealership(of course). Before taking it in, I requested that they check
all the ground connections anyway. The write up states that the
connections were tight...it didn't say they actually did anything
though. I would like to take a look for myself since it happened again
after they looked at it. There were no codes, by the way.

 

There are probably 20 different ground connections in the car, and
they only checked the main battery ground, and maybe the ground
strap between engine and chassis.

 

I forget his exact words, but he said they checked them all...probably
all the ones that were easy to get at....

 

yes, mine did the exact same thing. a tight ground, does not
mean a good ground. what the tech did was take the connection apart,
clean all the contact surfaces and put it back together.
that was over a year ago and no problems since.
it was a main body ground, seems like it was on the firewall, driver
side.
i'm not saying it'll fix yours, just fixed mine.

 

Thanks.