Hey folks,
Have a 1970 98 olds with 455, stock basically. Bought car with alarm system previous owner installed. When disconnected battery cables and re connect them the alarm would sound; turning key to on would disarm it and allow me to start vehicle. In process currently of painting vehicle and disconnected or removed what looks like starter or ignition solenoid mounted on driver side fender wheel wake and have now re mounted it and connect battery both post's get alot of spark and sizzle sound without the alarm going off now. Advice please

 

What do you mean when you say "alot" of spark. Do you mean the battery arcs to the battery cables, or that the alarm speaker just pops and sparks instead of sounding a siren?

Remember that the negative battery cable is the first to be removed and last to be installed. Do you want to remove the alarm?

 

Basically you have something that's powered when the key is off, alarm, aftermarket stereo/amp, etc... Disconnect the alarm to start with, most often the goofy alarms are not worth the trouble anyway.

 

Yes i do want to remove alarm. Proven to be difficult to grasp more than I expected.

 

Start with the controller and find the interrupt to prevent starting if the alarm is activated. There may or will be a horn connection, lights, anti tow mercury switch.

 

Dunno where you come up with that weird ****. In 15 years of installing aftermarket alarms I have never seen an "anti tow mercury switch".

If you have an aftermarket alarm, it will have a control module that all of the wiring will come from. It will include a main power feed 12V constant, an ign. lead, a ground lead, a siren or horn lead. If it is any kind of decent alarm, it will also include neg./pos. door trigger, hood/trunk trigger, light flash, ign./starter kill relay, ign. override button, door lock/unlock outputs, LED output, impact sensor, and quite a few other wires that most often will not be used. The only thing that will incapacitate the vehicle is the ign./starter kill relay. That must be found and corrected or your vehicle will not start if you remove the rest of the alarm. If you remove the alarm, find the control module and follow ALL of the wires from it to their final connection and remove them. Be methodical and thorough. Leave nothing behind! And like I said, find the ign./starter disable relay and restore the factory wiring where it was cut. That should be the only place that the factory wiring is actually disconnected and it must be restored to make the vehicle whole.

 

Those "goofy alarms" have saved a good many classic and highly valuable cars from incompetent thieves in my experience. I have corrected quite a few attempted hotwire jobs where an aftermartket alarm saved a vehicle from being stolen. A few dollars to correct some wiring sure beats paying a deductible towards vehicle replacement or even major repairs after joy ride recovery.

 

Perhaps your not old enough.

We all have our opinions.

 

A little more background; fist bought car no electrical issues; at least none of what I mentioned. Once got car to location of where I beging tearing it down for restoring is where I first noticed when disconnecting a battery cable then reconnecting the alarm would sound; I'd disarm it just by turning key to on position. This seems normal to me. However, bout three weeks go by with fenders , hood and front assembly being off the car. Now that painted n stuff and put I back together N time came to connect battery is when more than normal spark at battery post AND no alarm went off(Different behavior). In troubleshooting, noticed wipers were not back to home position so wiper motor active, fixed that. Still alot of spark no alarm. Changed fuses, same thing. Went through all grounds, cleaned and re tighten. This time, said F it connecting battery ground cable last and starting the ****** regardless. Still spark , no alarm but started. I noticed a what looks like a circuit breaker drive side of firewall which looks corroded as ****. Disconnected battery, circuit breaker, re connect battery. Now normal spark no alarm and case starts still. I think corrosion may be culprit of few components when had car without front end. Thought, opinions?

 

A typical car alarm will draw less current than the clock on your dash if you have one. Analog or digital, take your pick. Alarms are supposed to restore to either "active" or "previous status" when the battery is reconnected. If your was going active previously, it is an older alarm. If it is not now, something has changed. Did you reconnect the siren wire the same way it was? Find the control module and post the name of it and we can give you more details about how it is supposed to react. Until then, find the main power lead for it and disconnect it. Your car should function fine with the alarm in passive mode.

 

I'm no expert on alarms and/or the relays associated w/ alarms. I'm awfully good w/ electrical (AC & DC). From the beginning of this thread I always suspected "somewhere" along the electrical system someone crossed the + with the -, or vice versa. You hook up a ground (-) wire to a (+) pole anywhere on the car, or the opposite; hook up a positive (+) wire to a ground (-) pole and nothing will happen while there is no battery in the vehicle. Then, watch what happens when you hook up the battery cables. Of course, the amount of amperage/volts being fed back into the battery will depend on the size of the wire(s), the location(s) of the wire(s), the device(s) the wire(s) are hooked to, etc.

Cris-cross your battery (reverse the polarity) of your battery terminal(s) and see what happens or try and put a jumper (lay a wrench) between the positive & negative terminals of the battery while it's hooked up. You get my point. Enormous amounts of excessive spark. Attempt the same thing on an AC circuit (say in your home) - stand back and watch the terminals melt. I have absolutely no clue or suggestion (in your case) where this may have occurred; but, it speaks to me of a Cris-cross in at least one or both poles somewhere in the system. JS

"Generally" speaking, you might see excessive spark when you have a large positive wire connected to ground somewhere on the vehicle and then hook up your battery.

 

I suspect the culprit being one of the cables running to that dumb relay or whatever the hell it is in the pic I sent in. Those were the only other cables I removed when removed fender. I remember all cables on that thing we're running to one post the post that also has a cable to it from + side of battery. Maybe one of them is grounded on the bolt hiding it down to fender. Because I did notice burned cables on plugins going to heater box. What freaking cable if any is grounded tho

 

You have a LOT of extra wires connected to your horn relay. It is a very good spot to connect extra wiring but you should go through all of them and remove any and all that don't need to be there. It is doubtful that you have one shorted to ground there at the relay because that would cause a massive discharge and possibly a fire if you managed to get the battery connected. Like someone else mentioned, do you have a high powered stereo or external amplifier in the car? They will spark quite aggressively when you connect them because they have capacitors inside that need to be charged.

 

Great catch & an excellent point. It does appear there a lot of (perhaps too many) wires connected to the horn relay & it would be better to start w/ tracing each wire to determine the function of each. Some wires may be incorrectly connected at the horn relay terminals. Good point on the external amplifier and/or stereo since capacitors store energy & won't dissipate energy like a resistor. While a horn relay+junction box is (as you said) a good place to connect wires, there are limits on the amount of amperage which can adequately be passed through the relay (which I don't know to be honest - maybe 30-40amps maximum?). In total, you should determine the function of each wire, add up the total draw from all wires (each wire separately based upon function) and in a best case scenario, probably consider using (at least) a separate relay (and in-line power fuse) for each of your devices attached to the horn relay+junction block.

Lots of unknown variables but I think cjsdad is spot-on - unravel that crows nest of wires to the horn relay+junction box and determine the function of each so you can move forward w/ establishing a good wiring schematic.
From your comment I suspect you're not very familiar w/ the function(s) of a relay (in general). If you plan on wiring correctly, you might do well to gain some familiarity w/ the functions of a relay and the types of relays - it won't happen overnight, but gaining some familiarity is an almost requirement if you want to move forward w/ hooking up additional equipment or maintaining what you have already. Don't be too intimidated, it takes a little while to grasp. In all cases DO label and create a wiring diagram which you can always reference which shows the function of each wire. Good luck!

Note that at the bottom of the (below) link, there is an excellent section on the types of relays employed for various devices.

https://www.the12volt.com/relays/spd...ive-relays.asp

 

There is no (easy) way to connect wiring through the horn relay because it is exactly that. A relay for the horn. But the stud on it makes a terrific junction point for just about anything you can imagine connecting to battery power. That is what makes it so dangerous, it is not fused! Something that happened on my car before it became mine, the steering wheel was replaced with a Grant and the horn button stuck in the on position. The horn relay was always on and causing a battery drain without me knowing about it because the coils inside the horns were melted. Try unplugging the horn relay and see if the spark goes away.

 

You can check if capacitors are the problem by doing this:
connect the battery
disconnect the battery
reconnect the battery

If you get spark on first connect but no spark when reconnecting, then the initial spark is due to charging big capacitors.

 

Holy Moelly am I glad I joined this thing. Relays are a fun topic and I'm sure there's infinite types of relays along with info on how to and how nots when it comes to relays. Someone mentioned a stuck horn earlier; a hunch here but this car has what I come to find out is a horn button lower driver side of dashboard. Maybe this horn on steering wheel is stuck also, or something as to why the button I mention. Any idea what the actually wire from the steering wheel horn looks like? Color maybe or diagram out there.

 

No high powered amp for stereo or subwoofer. In my pic I sent in- top right corner driver side firewall is a capacitor (I believe, correct?) And i followed it leading to an orange wire to front seat under driver side. Make sense for a.capacitor running from seat to capacitor to horn relay or should it be direct to battery?

 

You should invest in a 1970 CSM which has the wiring diagrams.

 

Why even waste your time replying with something like that that's obviousand that's assuming the person asking the question hasn't looked for 1