I have not had any trouble with them, but I would think there are some wiring problems that could cause trouble. Like any car, if you lock the car in "security" mode, like with a key, then you reach through the window and unlock it, you put the car in full-blown stolen mode. Any car will do that. So if the wiring that recognizes the key turned is damaged, you'd never work through that. Like I said, though, I have not had any trouble with them.


Normally if you "steal" the car you can unsteal it by locking and unlocking the door several times with a key.


Some 850's had a key fob clicker that had extra features and thus on a 20 year old car causes extra problems, especially if you lock the car with it and then lose it. Do you have a key fob controller?


Also, the 850's are a little funny in that all the doors have to be locked or unlocked together, which is odd. When the battery is dead, this is no longer true, and the system gets in a state that it's not normally in. If the door actuators quit working, the car can put itself in the wrong state and it could be self-inflicted. I have never really had to work on that either, but it seems to me that the car monitors whether it locked properly or not.

 

I believe the immobilizer also has a battery in it - wondering if that needed to recharge when the new baattery was put in. Did you try locking/unlocking the doors 5x with the fob to reset it?

 

All I had to do was lock and unlock the door a few times... I knew it was going to be some rookie mistake. Thank you for the help!