Saturday, April 7, 2012

Parenting disaster - an ongoing series

Well I have to confess to really making a hash of this one.

Daughter has a car with a Mongoose Alarm system and a two button remote. We have two, just in case.

The remote button to the car  she uses needed the battery replacing, so she said, which you'd think would be within the capability of most parents with a small screwdriver and no fear of taking a small object apart. So here we go. Captain Dad;


  1. Find Small Screwdriver

  2. Took remote apart, a bit fell out.

  3. Ignore small bit, she'll be right mate

  4. Go back to garage get remote control for garage door, battery is the same as for the garage remote control as the car one.

  5. Change the battery

  6. Reassemble car remote, noting that it appears to need the small bit that fell out to make the screw work,never mind she'll be right mate

  7. Try out newly powered car remote

  8. Doesn't work

  9. Disassemble car remote, no more bits fall out

  10. Turn battery around it's now in the right way

  11. Go to tool box, find an unopened super glue packet

  12. Find tweezers

  13. Stick fingers together

  14. Stick bit that had fallen out back in again

  15. Reassemble remote

  16. Test



It doesn't work though.

Now in Pdubyahland this means that the remote has forgotten it's code, right and has to be re-learnt, so I get on the interwebtubes and find out how to learn the remote the code to the alarm.

Print that off, go to car, go through  the process, and I can't get it to work.

And this is where it's gone wrong.

I've managed to arm the alarm, but neither of the remote buttons now work. The car is disabled, the remotes don't work. The engine is immobilized. It won't start.

It's a holiday weekend, anyone that can fix it is on holiday. I'd disconnect the battery to see if that resets the alarm and there are thee outcomes


  1. It won't matter, the car will still be immobilized

  2. The alarm will go off as it thinks it's being tampered with

  3. it'll reset itself



I'm not really a fan of 1-3 odds, and I can't see disconnecting the battery option working as when we got the car the battery had been flat for a couple of months.

lesson: Don't. Just don't.

No comments:

Post a Comment