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Alarm wont stop sounding

Jun 22, 2024
7
0
Hi Guys,

Recently bought a Seat Leon for my partner.

The car alarm will sound after around 30 seconds of being locked.

I have noticed on the dash the boot door will flash red constantly.

I have scanned it with an OBD scanner and get a short on the middle brake light, I have replaced if and still getting a short.

Can someone please offer any advice?
 

RUM4MO

Active Member
Jun 4, 2008
7,963
1,058
South Scotland
Remember that if you have bought a basic OBD scan tool, it might just be checking for emissions related engine controller codes, and so any thing else being offered or suggested as fault codes, could be garbage.

Using a VW Group fully compliant scan tool would be more helpful.

Also, there is one very easy way to work out if the LED replacement interior lights are adding to your problems.

Edit:- I'm surprised that the alarm is actually arming if the boot lid being open is detected - although if that boot lid open detected is intermittent, then maybe this is the problem. Remember when you "pop" the boot/hatch on a locked car, that area of the car is removed from the monitoring system - otherwise the alarm would sound every time you/we "pop'd" the boot/hatch of a locked car.
 
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Walone

Active Member
Feb 10, 2016
1,617
452
Near Heathrow
Hi Guys,

Recently bought a Seat Leon for my partner.

The car alarm will sound after around 30 seconds of being locked.

I have noticed on the dash the boot door will flash red constantly.

I have scanned it with an OBD scanner and get a short on the middle brake light, I have replaced if and still getting a short.

Can someone please offer any advice?
I'm thinking that as you have a short on the middle brake lamp and also it's showing that the boot is open, that it could be related to a fault in the loom that goes from boot lid to body.
 
Jun 22, 2024
7
0
Worked out it was the boot light that was causing issues...

I've replaced the lights in the centre console above tolhe mirror to LEDS are they meant to get extremely hot?

I get halogen being hot but surely not LEDs?
 

RUM4MO

Active Member
Jun 4, 2008
7,963
1,058
South Scotland
This is the trouble with many retro fitted LED "bulbs", they will have a resistor that is doing nothing more than just consuming power and that gets converted to heat, plus, it will be these resistors that are the weakest point in an LED "bulb" - so extremely long service life might not be achieved.

Systems that are designed from the beginning to have LEDs are not subject to this.

Edit:- added in a missing "not" to the last sentence.
 
Last edited:

Tell

Full Member
Staff member
Moderator
This is the trouble with many retro fitted LED "bulbs", they will have a resistor that is doing nothing more than just consuming power and that gets converted to heat, plus, it will be these resistors that are the weakest point in an LED "bulb" - so extremely long service life might not be achieved.

Systems that are designed from the beginning to have LEDs are subject to this.
I replaced all the high use sucken halogen lights in the house to LED they have been much more reliable than the halogen lights that were blowing all the time. All been good on that. Upgraded the dining room lights also beyond what they would normally handle if halogen since they would over heat, got away with twice the light in the holder. All twelve bulbs.

Nine weird tube sunken lights swapped to led in the lounge. They took an eternity to get up to brightness. LED bang straight on. Four stair lights to LED.... loads more. Large property with many sunken lights else you'd have lampshades all over the place looking rather ugly or lamp pointers.

The car LEDs on the reversing and on the rear flashers have been fine. Eight years now. As I said on the other post if you have part LED in the car it helps since the appropriate circuit resistors are in. If you follow people's projects with specific recommended bulbs then you won't have an issue. If you pick bulbs that haven't got a track record then more likely to.
 

RUM4MO

Active Member
Jun 4, 2008
7,963
1,058
South Scotland
Oh yes, mainly vertical "facing" candle bulbs, while they were filament versions, did have an annoying habit of tripped the MCB associated with that circuit, though I did buy and fit a slower class of MCB to stop that.

The weakness in the domestic mains LED retro fit "bulbs" will be the voltage convertors that really can't handle being in a small closed space, I'm using Philips brand only, and they tend to fail after maybe 4 years, which is okay. Plenty flush/countersunk fittings as well, the only light that I've been lazy to change in our house is in a downstairs toilet, it still has its far to slow to hand out 100% brightness folded fluorescent circular tube light fitting. Garage still has many old fluorescent tube strip lights, lack of confidence that "drop in" LED tubes will supply the same level of light has held that change back.

I seem to have missed out "not" in my posting, I'll edit that now!
 

Tell

Full Member
Staff member
Moderator
Oh yes, mainly vertical "facing" candle bulbs, while they were filament versions, did have an annoying habit of tripped the MCB associated with that circuit, though I did buy and fit a slower class of MCB to stop that.

The weakness in the domestic mains LED retro fit "bulbs" will be the voltage convertors that really can't handle being in a small closed space, I'm using Philips brand only, and they tend to fail after maybe 4 years, which is okay. Plenty flush/countersunk fittings as well, the only light that I've been lazy to change in our house is in a downstairs toilet, it still has its far to slow to hand out 100% brightness folded fluorescent circular tube light fitting. Garage still has many old fluorescent tube strip lights, lack of confidence that "drop in" LED tubes will supply the same level of light has held that change back.

I seem to have missed out "not" in my posting, I'll edit that now!
The weird compact tubes I replaced with these


They are direct replacement LEDs for those.

Then the G9 ones. G4 and MR16 then the regular ones which are like the Sylvania ones above, same fitting. There were so many halogen lights in house and they would blow regularly. Shifting to LED gave 100% reliability except one Sylvania played up. Basically I bought plenty of spares. The house was built when halogen lights were popular so they went overboard with all manner of novel fittings except in the lounge with the compact tube in the fabrication. Then in cloakroom and airing cupboard another weird compact tube fitting by Sylvania. I gave up finding those spares. I will cut them off and fit a normal bayonet if they go.

It's paid to shift to LED once done you don't need to repair broken halogen bulbs. Still got areas which are not high use so will change as they go.
 

RUM4MO

Active Member
Jun 4, 2008
7,963
1,058
South Scotland
My only problem has been trying to off load my old filament bulbs, I did give a friend a box of maybe 20 mixed types, that was over 6 years ago, and I see that I seem to have held onto quite a few for maybe "just in case" events. Even a very old and still unused 275watt heat lamp - kept that in case I could use it in the garage for warming up areas of metalwork, mind you, a "good old" Anglepoise or 2 with 120watt spot lamps is good enough for that.
Still got fluorescent strip lights under kitchen units, bought a box of true daylight tubes to keep them going. Also I need to replace a PIR + Timer unit in an under stairs cupboard with one that has a mechanical relay as the solid state version currently in there as it just dims the replacement LED "tubes" due to the line load current being so low instead of switching off - something that I knew would happen!

Our house has 2 outside lights mounted high up, we bought this house when it was maybe 10 years old, it had 500watt linear filament lamps in each and controlled by a PIR system, I quickly knocked that down to 300watt, and a few years ago swopped them for Philips extremely high output(for that model/type of lamp) LED lamps, so far so good though the original 300watt lamps I fitted, always Philips did tend to last a very long time and normally it was the "cement" on the ends of the tubes that finally failed and so good electrical contact was lost.

In general, running low current devices through switches etc intended for higher currents will end up causing some "connection" problems, I've had to strip down quite a few side lamps and clean up the bulb holder contacts to restore a working light. In control industry you tend to find that relay contacts etc have different coatings for differing uses, so this is not something that surprised me - just annoying.
 
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