When I went to look at our new 2006 2.0i Sport I checked that the key fob worked properly, arming and disarming the alarm and opening the boot. The spare key fob wasn’t around so I didn’t have a chance to test that.
I picked up the car and drove it home, which is when I started to run into problems with the key fobs. The spare did not work at all, which I diagnosed as a flat battery. The main one had also stopped working. As the car has been with the sales outfit for a while I decided that it was probably battery problem as well so I ordered a pair of 3v lithium batteries.
Yesterday I swapped out the batteries in both fobs and that is where the confusion began. I get totally inconsistent behaviour.
- Sometimes the car will lock / unlock and the indicators will flash
- Sometimes the car will lock / unlock and the indicators will not flash (but the alarm still goes off when I manually unlock the car)
- Sometimes the remote will neither lock nor unlock the car
For example, I locked the car with the key fob - no indicator lights. To test if the alarm was set or not I unlocked the driver's door with the key and opened it. The alarm went off. After trying both remotes neither would cancel the alarm and in the end I inserted one of the keys and started the engine, which did cancel the alarm (to my great relief).
A consistent, repeatable fault I can deal with. This wierd, random behaviour is not something I can make sense of. Is anyone able to make any suggestions?
Okay, sorted it.
After my above post I had a sudden brainwave. I took both fobs apart and carefully bent out the three-pointed contact that sits on top of the battery to improve the contact. Both fobs now work fine - although I had to do a re-sync to get the ‘spare’ working as I guess its battery had been flat for a while.
There is nothing I hate more than intermittent / inconsistent problems.
It may seem strange, but the alarm going off when the car is opened with the key in the door lock is not a fault. AFAIK that is standard alarm behavior, not just on Mazda.
The reasoning is that the alarm systems rarely, if ever, have a system for reading the key chip in the door lock. The locking and alarm system is designed to be operated solely by the security coded wireless remote units. If the key is used to open the door, then the alarm is designed to take the pessimistic view and assume that as the remote has not been used then the lock is being forced and so it triggers the alarm. As you’ve found, inserting the key in the ignition allows the chip to be recognised and silences the alarm.
I’ve also found if you open the boot before getting out and then lock the car with the fob the lights don’t flash. When you finally close the boot then they do flash confirming doors, bonnet and boot are all closed and the alarm is set.
Intrigued you had to resynch a key (how?) - when I bought my car the spare key fob had a flat bettery, and I believe it had been like that for some time. I changed the flat battery and it worked immediately
JS
I was expecting the alarm to go off - I just wasn’t sure at that point whether it was armed or not and unlocking the car was a simple way to find out!
I’m not going to try to explain the behaviour of the alarm system, I’m just relieved that it all appears to be working now!