# E36 Alarm System



## bmw318is (Sep 1, 2003)

Hi everyone,

I just recently purchased a BMW factory alarm system from a dealer in Virginia for my 1996 318is. It arrived yesterday, via FedEx. 

I started the installation process of removing the glovebox and such. After I got everything hooked up behind there, I went up under the hood to install the siren. When I installed it, it sounded like it was going off all the time, only it was going off very quietly. You would have to actually put your ear up close to it to hear it. But, that is all that it would do. When you lock the doors via the remore, it would not make the chirp. When you would hit the panic mode, all the lights would flash, but the siren would not sound. I decided to check the siren, so I went across the street to try it out on my neighbors M Roadster. It worked exactly as it should have worked. I checked the wires with a volt meter. I had the exact same voltage coming to my siren as my neighbors M Roadster did. Today, I called the dealer that I bought it from, they said that it has to be initallized at my dealer. I thought that was only for the E46's.

Another thing that I noticed is that there seems to be an extra plug on the wire harness. It is not the one for the hood switch. It is another one, it is back by the plug that goes into the alarm box. It is a square plug that has 4 sockets, but only 2 have the metal prongs in them.

Can anyone please help me out as to what I have to do to get this thing to work correctly. I am at a total loss. I installed it exactly as the directions told me to. The siren won't work, and they are saying that I have to get initalized.

Thanks for any help,
Tadd Garcia :thumbup:


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## bmw318is (Sep 1, 2003)

any ideas???


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## vexed (Dec 22, 2001)

This may not be much help but I installed the factory alarm in a 1994 E36 325i. It did *not* need to be initialized by the dealer. You may want to unplug all the connections and start over, IIRC the alarm worked fine as soon as I installed it.


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