Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice?

Yesterday afternoon the alarm suddenly went off for about 5 minutes every 30seconds (while the lights were not flashing). I unlocked and locked the car, opened and shut all the doors and even with the engine running the alarm was still going off. Then it finally stopped, however the front wippers stopped working since. Also keep getting a message " Alarm system service required".

I checked fusses F22 and F26 today and seem to be ok.

I would really appreciate if anyone could help me before I take the car to a garage.

Many thank S.

sounds like you might have moisture on the fuseboard, drop the fuseboard down and check that all the connectors are secured, and no obvious moisture is present...

Thanks, I've checked the fuseboard and it looks fine. I've also ran the selftest and "no fault" was found.

Done some research and someone was suggesting that the Alarm sounder module needs replacing???

I wonder how expensive that could be?

I had a similar issue on my focus but my wipers stopped and so did the lights and indicators, I ended up reseating the relay and it worked fine, might be worth trying the same possibly an intermittent trigger on one or two of the contacts is causing a short and the alarm...

Thanks, we will try that. :)

Also occasionally when starting the engine, we get a message " Front Headlight Malfunction", but the lights work fine. Do you think it might be a connection to the wipper/alarm problem?

sounds like it, again might be worth giving it a reaseat. probably a short connection, or not sturdy enough so its throwing readings all over...

think the alarm module is situated under the nearside wheel arch.

It's not the fuseboard at fault. The Smax has it's own unique faults, and this is one of them.

It will be water ingress in the alarm module which greggers has correctly pointed out is in the NSF wheel arch and this causes erroneous canbus messages which then cause the wipers to play up.

The solution is new module. You may be lucky and be able to clean up & dry out the existing module but no-one (to my knowledge) has managed it yet...

There is a TSB article (download from the smax owners club website) on how to ensure the same outcome doesn't befall your new unit.

I believe the cost to replace (inc labour & coding to the car) is around £300.

137699, many thanks for your post. Yes you're right

I took the car to a garage today and bad news were confirmed. I was told that the alarm siren is faulty and got two options either to disconnect the module and wipers would work, but then i don't see a point to have an alarm on the car, if it's not working fully. Or the more expensive option is to have it replaced and the quote was £250 incl.VAT, so I guess the price is right.

Could you please send me a link to the TSB article you mentioned...

Thanks again

Nice call 137699, Sarka, what sort of cost are you looking at at the moment?

The TSBs can be accessed from here:

http://www.smaxownersclub.com/forum/showthread.php?7751-The-Library