Electrical Gremlins

[Jim Haseltine]

My car has occasional electrical hissyfits, often involving keyless systems. Sometimes it won't unlock, sometimes it doesn't recognise the key and occasionally it will throw a 'key not in vehicle' warning when driving - all of which I've blamed on key fob batterys.
A month or so back when tracing the cause of the front cigarette light socket not working I noticed that one of the glove box fixing bolts was missing so I replaced it and since then I've been plagued by an irritating rattle from behind the glove box. Yesterday it really got on my wick so this morning I stripped the box out to discover a badly mounted Cobra GPS tracking unit in there, the cables of which were causing the rattle.
Although it appears to have been installed with more than the usual skill exhibited by most aftermarket installers it still looks like a blind man's guide dog could have done a better job (and probably wouldn't have lost or broken so many fittings), I suspect from the state of the hacked cables and the circuits I think have been compromised that I've found the source of my problems.

Now I've the task of tracing where it's connected (there are two cables that seem to head off towards the back of the car, possibly to the battery and an obvious GPS antenna lead too so possibly another unit is mounted elsewhere), stripping the thing out and making good.

[ATinOf]

I would also say an obvious place to look for one if you were so inclined to have to remove one for whatever reason too