Alarm battery upgrade on 360 - killing the red dash LED :-)

Hi and thanks to all contributing to this thread. I had an inoperative alarm and a constantly lit LED (very annoying at night) so guessed I had the same problem.

I pulled out the siren today and on opening it found it to be as bad as the worst ones on this thread. I tried connecting an external battery but several hours later it's still showing the same symptoms and so I'm now resigned to ordering a new unit.

Can anyone confirm whether or not the new unit is simply plug and play or are there re-programming and mating issues to be carried out when one introduces the new component?

 

Ricambi sells them and they are plug & play

 

FD- Not only that, the latest versions last much longer and cost less. Brian Crall has stated he ended up buying back most of the sirens in which he put a new battery, so be aware of that and just cough up the $330 or so. A whole lot less effort, especially since that represents less than 3 hours of labor for your typical FChat person.

http://www.ricambiamerica.com/product_info.php?products_id=207296

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

hello quick question i have the same board with the 2 green batteries sodered to the circuit board when i remove the batteries from the circuit board do i need to soder wire to both positive ends and both negative ends on the circuit board or just connect one positive and one negative? in other word i know both positive has to go to one wire for the new battery but didnt know if i had to hook both positive circuit board connections to the 9v battery and then both negative to the 9v battery
thanks in advance
stuart

 

Great post - thanks - my beep just went out and the LED is constantly lit - my car will be going to the dealership soon and i was going to bring this up, if this write up works, you will have saved me a nice chunk of change! Thanks!

 

Basically the answer to your question is yes, you only need to connect one positive and one negative from your new 9v battery to the circuit board.

Previously there were two batteries effectively wired together in series so that the voltage from the two approx 4.5v batteries was ramped up to approx 9v.

 

For those whose circuit board was melted by leaking batteries-

A guy on ebay has a few new siren modules- open box but new- My offer was accepted at $210.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Ferrari-Alarm-Siren-000177148_W0QQitemZ220519231566QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item3357f8704e

 

By any chance did you question the age of this stock? I don't care about the condition of the box but if that part is old, isn't the battery life going to be that much shorter?

 

The box in the picture shows expiration 01/02/15

 

Good eye! Thanks

 

I followed the procedure up to the point of having the alarm apart. I have the 2 green Varta soldering in batteries. I tested them with a battery tester and they are reading the 7.2 volts that I assume they are supposed to be. So I also assume there is nothing wrong with my alarm, so why is my red light blinking when I drive my 2001 360?

 

Batteries could still be shot - you might well get 7.2v with no load but they could drop to next-to-nothing once a load comes on.

 

Well, I finally tackled this project today. Finally, my alarm chirps when I activate / deactivate my alarm and the red LED is off when driving. Thank you to the OP and all of the other posters who took the time to write up and show photos of the job. I am not much of a DIYer so there is NO WAY that I could have done this job without everyone's input.

All told, the job took me 5 hours but that included a trip to my dental office to drill open the alarm box (I got impatient after 15 minutes with the razor blade and little progress) and trips to radio shack and the hardware store. My car also came with an aftermarket amp in the front trunk so that also took some additional time to move that about to get the panels out.

My input for others who will do this job in the future would be to make a little map of the panels on a piece of paper and set the screws on the map in their respective location as you remove the allen screws for the panel because they are of differing sizes. This made putting the screws back in the panels a cinch. I also recommend laying beach towels to cover the fenders and bumper to protect them as you will be doing a lot of leaning over the bumper and fender to get to the screws and alarm bolts. I also recommend wearing a shirt and shorts with no buttons or snaps as you will be rubbing against the fenders and don't want to scratch the paint. I found one of the harder things to do was to replace the alarm in the bolts / grooves at the end. I finally found that is was much easier if you thread and tighten the 10 mm nuts quite a bit and that way the alarm box will slide more easily onto the 2 bolts. Although I didn't see much mention of it, I turned off the battery with the turn off knob in the front trunk prior to starting the job. Thanks again for everyone's help. Fchat is awesome.

 

I have "repaired" the PCB in my alarm module and fitted external battery. The alarm now beeps when it should and everything is working correctly. Except, the red LED still lights up after the initial initialisation check. I can only assume that the PCB is faulty (there was a lot of corrosion on the board from the old Varta batteries which had leaked all over the PCB).

Any ideas anyone?

 

Also wanted to give thanks to everyone's contribution and advise on this fix, I recently started to suffer the same exact problem on my 02 360 spider. The warning light was intermittent, sometimes it will stay lite when the engine is running, sometime not. I suspect the battery was on it's way south, so to prevent any damages to the PCB I decided to take care of this problem beforehand.

I couldn't find any lower voltage 9V rechargeable, so I ended up with a Raovac which is around 8volt from Fry's electronic. Also I couldn't find any NiCad, so ended up with a NiMh. I figured that the new located is fairly easy to be accessed, if it goes out again it would be an easy 5 minutes job to replace it so no big deal.

The advise of putting some sort of fender protection is good, along with mapping out where the panel screw goes. Careful with the razor blade, I ended up splitting open more skin on my thumb than the water barrier.

Another advise to add, when gluing the box back together make sure the pin connector is perfectly lined up in the middle of the hole opening, if not the plug will not go back on to the module when you try to install it and you will end up cutting open the alarm box the 2nd time.

Just love it when there is a good solution for a problem.

Thanks
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First patient Monday: Doc I've got this plastic taste in my mouth...................

 

Yeah, there were some black plastic shavings flying about as I drilled the box open. I vacuumed up but I should probably double check the treatment room before I see my first patient tomorrow.

 

Brian Crall (Rifledriver) did this on cars in his shop for a while and said he had to buy most of them back eventually (fix them for free) when they failed. The simplest thing to do is replace the siren with the latest version and everything will be ok. No problems with corroded circuits, wiring, etc. $330 or so.

http://www.ricambiamerica.com/product_info.php?products_id=207296


Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Are the latest versions any better? Won't they just fail in the same manner in a few years?

 

N4S- No idea. Just telling you what one of the pros quoted. Have heard of the problem with 456s and early 550s in the V12 forum, but no problems with the late 550s and 2002-2005 575Ms that are contemporary with the 360s.

Taz
Terry Phillips

 

Interesting. Wonder if they upgraded the internal batteries in the later parts. Someone above posted how NiCads are good for 2000+ cycles so maybe they changed to a quality NiCad. With those, even if you drove your car once a day (most people don't seem to), it would take 5+ years for the batteries to cycle out. It's not unusual for later runs of parts to have improvements in them after warranty experience shows the original parts were inadequate. An example I'm familiar with is the so-called Final Stage Resistor in BMWs, which controls the HVAC system. I went through 3 of them before the last one now seems to be adequately robust (now hopefully I've not jinxed it!), and with each change, even from the same supplier (and maybe even the same OEM part number), the part looked different.

 

Doesnt this thread show what most people use? Replying on the fly so to speak but most people replace the two internal batteries with an external 9v rectangular shaped one.

 

IMO, it is good to see that several Ferrari 360 owners have replicated this approach, which does work!
Thanks.

 

They die too.

Bought a new siren late 2008, it just failed on me now.

 

Read the battery replacement options but have been told by an "official" source that someone on F-Chat found out and posted a Chevy replacement part number that is the same as teh original equipment but about $35-50. Anyone seen this post and part number?