Rough Night

[blume357]

Edit: don't know how I put this in the political section... I meant for it to be in the lounge... moderators should feel free to move it.

For those not in the know, I sleep out on a porch pretty much year round. My wife lets our little fox hound Tally Ho sleep with me if it is not going to go below 40.
Last night Tally and I are sound asleep and at 1:00 I'm woken to a car horn going off... almost like morse code.... I'm still groggy and trying to figure it out and then start wondering if it is my van or the wife's Ford Fusion ... so I get up and of course by the time I'm up and have the CPAP mask off the sound stops.... and so I lay back down and then a minute later it starts up again.. and so I get up and it sounds like either the van that's in the upper drive or further up the street and so I walk through the house and go stand on the front porch..... all quiet.....so I go get back in the bed, Tally has decided to come inside and lay down and I leave her in her inside bed. 5 minutes later... one beep.... then 5 minutes later another beep... damn! So, I get back up and go back outside and stand in the street waiting and about 3 minutes later the neighbor's Dodge truck beeps about 3 times and the parking or brake lights come on.... I have my smart ass phone with me and I google Dodge truck horn problems and discover this is not that unusual.... something about the wiring harness and relays.... I contemplate getting some tools and popping the hood on his truck and disconnecting the battery (he never locks his truck) but then decide it is not really a smart thing to do at 1:30 in the morning. I decided to just go down to my office and sleep the rest of the night on the bench down there.... Guess I'll have to tell the neighbor about this in a little while, he and I are planning to start refraining the front porch this morning... (Damaged by Helene)

 

[eveled]

That is frustrating. Lost sleep is no joke. Good luck with the construction project.

 

[Geronimo Jim]

Just another benefit of living in the south!

 

[Ale-8(1)]

So the truck's owner apparently can't hear a horn in his own driveway?

I think I might have been tempted to give him a wakeup call.

 

[Jeepnik]

Some years ago I was working nights. A neighbor had a new car. About 9 AM the alarm started going off. After an hours I'd had enough and contacted the Sheriff. The deputy I spoke to sounded positively gleeful. He said they had a brand new law and if an alarm went off for an hour they could tow the vehicle. A deputy was there in less than 15 minutes and based on my statement ticketed the car and called for a tow.

The tow truck and the neighbor, someone had called her, showed up at the same time. So you had a deputy, owner and tow truck driver all yelling over what to do when her dad showed up. He walked up with a big set of cutters, the hoods already open, and just cuts the ground wire. Apparently someone had called him. After cutting the wire he just got back in his truck and drove off leaving the three of them to figure out what was next.

 

[blume357]

Edit: don't know how I put this in the political section... I meant for it to be in the lounge... moderators should feel free to move it.

The neighbor and I spent all day working on putting our front porch back together.... he could not hear the horn neither could his wife... they sleep on the other side of the house from this driveway.... and it was not a normal car horn or alarm but kind of a real short toot. Also, my wife was in the guest bedroom on the side of the house that the neighbors driveway is on and she did not hear it.... just me out on the porch on the other side of the house.... seems the problem was the battery in his fob for the truck had gone dead..... damn auto engineers.... I think it only does this if the vehicle is locked.... because it did not make a peep all day.... then did yesterday afternoon when he started messing with it... he was going to have to go to the store to buy a new battery, a CR2032 but I had a couple of packs of them... seems one of the red dots on one of my rifles uses those...the disc batteries about the size of a nickel.

Side note: Here is where we are with the front porch work:
The new concrete is the addition we are adding.... the 1x6s on the roof show the original size of the roof but not the 2ft over hang... all the roof joist were broken from the 7 (I think) trees that fell on the front of the house.
Photo is from one of the security cameras I have around the house.

 

[Mike J]

That stinks about the horn going off & waking you up. Glad y'all got it figured out.
Good job, helping your neighbor repair your porch.
Vehicles can be funny. After his second wife died her teenage son still lived in my dad's house for a while. The young man's car battery would be dead every morning. He & dad went round & round trying to figure out what was up. Tried many different things. Finally Dad woke up one night in the middle of the night & looked out the window. The headlights that were left off were on. He replaced the switch & it solved the problem. It only happened at night when it got cooler &* things contracted.

 

[edm1]

I had a Silverado that would set off the alarm randomly if I left it hooked up and wired to a trailer

 

[el caminero]

Horns. I worked an auto auction for a bit. A fleet of hawaii or so-cal rental cars came in, and first cold night they began steady sounding the horns. I went out and hit the horn and some would stop, and later come back on. I was asked whats going on, i asked are these the cali or hawaii cars, they said yes. I said the soft plastic on the wheel covering the horn switch had shrunk in the sun, now the cold was contracting it even farther. They handed out a couple wrenches and told us disconnect the battery as it goes off. The dealer said something about new steeringwheels covers. they later asked how i came up with that, i said id heard it before somewhere...

 

[Gator89]

I have a 2009 Toyota Venza and if left locked the alarm (horn) will go off.

I rarely lock the doors on my hooptie.

 

[Tensaw]

Lots of software in cars now days. Two days ago at 11:00 in the morning a doe running very fast crashes in the driver's side of my wife's Mustang (I was driving). Breaks the mirror off and puts a big size dent in the back quarter panel. Kills the deer. Now the driver's door window would go up 2/3 of the way and automatically go down. Body shop tech said that he would have to reset the software to fix it.

 

[Joe Chartreuse]

No more new cars and their electronics for me. Half the problems are caused by sensors that are supposed to SHOW problems, not cause them because they are there. My newest car has some of it, but not much (13 years old). My oldest is 33 years old with NONE of it, and I am happiest driving that one ( Originally a DOT work truck. A Sierra 2500 with a Corvette engine swapped in).

 

[Jeepnik]

Lots of software in cars now days. Two days ago at 11:00 in the morning a doe running very fast crashes in the driver's side of my wife's Mustang (I was driving). Breaks the mirror off and puts a big size dent in the back quarter panel. Kills the deer. Now the driver's door window would go up 2/3 of the way and automatically go down. Body shop tech said that he would have to reset the software to fix it.

If there isn't physical damage, and it does require "resetting" the software, that usually consists of disconnecting the battery for a few minutes then reconnecting it and letting the system reboot. Geesh, it's just a computer and software, it ain't black magic. If a twenty something "tech" can learn to do it so can you. Probably instructions on youtube.

 

[blume357]

My wife's Ford Fusion Hybrid every time you turn it on has a big display that the software needs to be upgraded and to connect to the internet to do this... I've tried several times to do this but it seems it won't connect.... to either the house or my phone which is odd because the dern car automatically connects to my phone via blue tooth when I get in it. We just hit the cancel button on the screen overtime that pops up.....

the other funny car feature... got in to go somewhere the other morning and the temperature had dropped into the 20's and it seems all four tires had low air pressure.... even showed the pressure for each on the display... seems they were all right on the edge of being low and the the low temp pushed them under.

 

[Jeepnik]

Here's a little bit of knowledge about tire pressures. If you have TPMS and rotate your tires the displayed pressure won't be for the correct tire.
You need to reinitialize the sensor so the computer now's their current location.

Most tire shops won't do this. Most vehicle owners don't know it's necessary. I learned the hard way. Had a low tire. Put air in it. Same tire showed low but another showed an increase Buried in the owner's manual was how to reinitialize the sensors.

 

[Tensaw]

If there isn't physical damage, and it does require "resetting" the software, that usually consists of disconnecting the battery for a few minutes then reconnecting it and letting the system reboot. Geesh, it's just a computer and software, it ain't black magic. If a twenty something "tech" can learn to do it so can you. Probably instructions on youtube.

Thanks for the info. Body shop said work should be completed by 12/24. Seems like a long time to repair. I think they are short handed during the holidays but I will follow up.

Body shop called and said the tech is working on it and it should be finished much sooner than quoted.

 

[wheelgun1958]

If there isn't physical damage, and it does require "resetting" the software, that usually consists of disconnecting the battery for a few minutes then reconnecting it and letting the system reboot. Geesh, it's just a computer and software, it ain't black magic. If a twenty something "tech" can learn to do it so can you. Probably instructions on youtube.

Airbus troubleshooting manual has many reboots to fix issues. Pull the breaker and wait then reset. Magic!

 

[Jeepnik]

Yep. The master reset switch works for many computer problems.