Hi guys,

I bought a 1996 850 GLT for a winter beater and it started giving me troubles a few weeks ago. It wouldn't start for me one day and I killed the battery trying to start it, I think I might've flooded it, as hard as that is to do on a fuel injected car. Managed to start it somehow, and it was fine. The battery went dead a few days later, boosted it and no problems, then again a few days later it would die.

I checked the alternator and its putting out between 13.5 and 13.9 volts depending on load, so I know thats good. One thing I've noticed though is the alarm won't arm sometimes. I'll close all doors, lock it, but the little red light won't come on.

Last night when I parked it, the light came on solid for a few seconds then blinked every so often. This morning it started up fine, and same thing when I left it during work. However, when I got home and tried starting it after it sat for only 2-3 hours, it didn't have enough power to start.

So there is definitely something going on with the alarm, I'm thinking its going into a 'standby' state where its prepared to arm but something is preventing it from doing so, and its draining the battery fairly quickly in this state.

Sorry for the lengthy post, but does anybody have any other ideas? Thanks!

 

First thing I would do is get a load test done on the battery. I just had one with an internal short that confounded me for a little while. The short could cause the alarm to not set. Mine caused a sensor to throw a CEL on a Honda I have when actually it was caused by the bad battery. Just a thought!

 

I threw in another battery because the original one was completely dead, the 'new' one in it now is only 2-3 years old, so it shouldn't be bad already but who knows.