I Hate Cars

Last weekend I took the car in for its 45000 mile service, which is an oil change and some other stuff. The guy told me I need to replace the rear brakes and the battery cable (it was all corroded).

"OK, fine, I'll bring it in next weekend," was my reply.

Now, after a few days I noticed something; whenever I went out to my car in the garage the doors were locked. For 18 months I've driven into the garage, turned off the ignition (doors automatically unlock), open the door, get out, close the door. The door stayed unlocked forever. 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day 1 week, whatever, the door would be unlocked when I came back in the garage and opened the car door.

As of last weekend (but I only really noticed it mid-week), the door would be locked when I went out. I don't like this; I don't want the car doing things uncommanded. I figured the tech did some sort of firmware update or made a little change to the car's configuration file to work on it.

So, today, I took it back for the battery cable and the brakes. I told the service writer about this; the first thing he saw was that the alarm was in "valet" mode, which he knew because there was a glowing read LED down under the dash board. He set it to "normal" mode and that was that, I assumed. When I go the car back I noticed something as soon as I got home; pressing a remote control button makes the horn go "toot toot" along with the regular and familiar to both of us "beep beep." OK, that is really annoying and also the car was still locking it's doors automatically. So I call the guy up and tell him this, supposedly he was taking notes and will call the service department and the main dealer on Monday.

Yeah, sure he will.

Several hours ago I heard the car's horn go "toot toot" all by itself. I thought it was outside so I ignored it. Then I heard it again a while later; I went out to the garage and it did it again right as I opened the house garage door. "Crap, this thing is fucked up," I thought. I knew that removing the battery cable was a traumatic thing for computer-controlled cars like mine and I was right. So, I got out the Owner's Manual and learned a few things. First, I can supposedly change the beeps for when I hit the remote; I tried to change them but was unsuccessful, I think. I also learned that this car has 4 (yes, FOUR) different automatic door lock modes. I read them all but the differences between three of them are very very subtle, mostly to do with when they lock (car in P, doors closed, ignition on vs car in anything except P, doors closed, ignition on vs something else vs MODE 2!!!!!!). Mode 2 is "No automatic door locking at all. Ever. You have to lock them yourself!"

"AHA!" I said, "A-HA!!!!!!!!!!!!"

So, I read the instructions on how to get it into Mode 2. Here they are:

0. Get in the car and close the door.
1. Depress the door lock button to unlock all the doors.
2. Put key in ignition, turn to "ON."
3. Within 5 seconds of doing that, press and hold the door lock button in the "lock" position for around 5 seconds.

Are you with me still?

4. Watch the "Door Ajar" indicator light on the dashboard - it will flash the number of times equal to the mode it's in.
5. Repeat until you are in the mode you want.

It was in mode 3, so I had to do that sequence three times to get it into mode 2.

Eventually I saw 2 "Door Ajar" light flashes. Yea, I'm in mode 2!

Let's test it! Start the car, put it in R (carefully, the big roll up garage door is still closed).

CLUNK! The doors lock.

Goddammit!

OK, well, fine, fuck that; I'll try again tomorrow in the daylight.

Time to try something else; let's try to turn off the horn tooting. I see the little red LED under the dash (under the steering column, waaaay down there actually). I remember the service guy reached under there to do something so I figured he was flipping a switch (My MSEE comes in handy every once in a while). I reached down there and - Yes! - there is a push button behind the LED. I press and release. Nothing. I press and hold. And hold. A few seconds later the red LED comes on. Yay! No more horn tooting.

So, if I can get the car into Automatic Door Locking Mode 2 I will be happy and forget those clowns over at the dealership trying to "fix" this. I'll leave the alarm in "valet" mode (I have no idea if that means it is disabled or not but who cares? When was the last time anyone called the cops because they heard a car alarm go off?). I have an owner's manual for the alarm, I think, because it was a dealer-installed factory add-on. I get a break on my insurance because I have a car alarm so it is worth something.

I hate cars.