SolaLarm SLA-815 alarm

[shchuka]

Hey all!  I have this alarm fitted in my GS (it was already fitted when I bought the bike).  It comes with a four-button fob.  The buttons are "A" (arm), "D" (disarm), "#" and "*". There is no way to arm/disarm the alarm from the bike itself.

When I just got the bike, the alarm would automatically arm about 30 seconds after I shut off the engine.  The only way to disarm it would be to press the "D" button on the fob.  If you don't turn the ignition on within the 30 seconds, the alarm would arm again.  This was extremely annoying, especially when doing any maintenance or anything else on the bike.  It was also very-very overzealous and any slight movement of the bike, even just slapping the top-box lightly, would set it off.  This thing was annoying me like there's no tomorrow.

Needless to say, there was no documentation of any sort coming with the alarm.  When I asked the PO about it, he said that he bought the bike with the alarm already fitted and no documentation.  I searched everywhere for the documentation for the alarm - and the only thing I could find was the site of the manufacturer, who wanted about $10 for a PDF version of the fob manual and another $20 for the PDF version of the alarm manual.Yikes!

Once I was annoyed enough enough and started just randomly pushing the buttons on the fob.  I don't know what I did, but some settings changed - and now the alarm would only come on after I turn off the ignition.  If I disarm it, it would not arm itself again unless I press the "A" button.  Perfect!

Well, today was the first time since I bought the bike (about 4 months) that I was riding in an absolutely pissing rain.  I disarmed the alarm at home, started and warmed the bike, rode for about 20 miles, then pulled into a petrol station, turned the engine off and pushed the "D" button to disarm the alarm.  Nothing happened.  Strange, I thought.  I shook the fob and pressed again - nothing.  The little blue LED on the fob does light up when I press the buttons, but nothing happens.  In the mean time, the damn thin armed itself.  I filled up the tank, paid for the petrol - but I couldn't disarm the bloody thing.  If I tried to turn the ignition on, it would go off like nuts.  I ended up having to pop the seat at the petrol station trace the 8 wires from the alarm, find one with an inline fuse and remove that fuse.  That shut it off.  Interestingly, I could start the bike normally after that and continue my way to work.

This whole sad story begs for a few questions:

1) If I could trace and silence the alarm in less than 5 minutes - any thief would be able to do the same - not very good, is it?

2) What could have happened in the pouring rain that messed up the fob/alarm?

3) Does anybody have the documentation for this alarm and/or fob?

Many thanks for reading this long post - and even more thank if you can help me with point (3).

[bassmechanicsz]

I have had various alarms on my previous cars and each one had a mode where it would automatically arm the car after walking away for 30 seconds along with other various settings.  They had 2 ways that you could change the mode, 1 being using the button on the inside of the car that is hidden under the dash and pushing it in the proper sequence.  Works great until you find the button is broken.  The other way was to use a various sequence of pushing the arm and disarm buttons with the door open to change modes.

The way you said you were able to just remove the seat and pull the fuse and then the bike worked just fine makes me seem to think that the original person who installed the alarm didn't hook it up correctly to where by simply disconnecting the wire the bike should still not start or atleast that is how i believe it should be hooked up or else that makes it nearly useless to anyone trying to steal the bike with half a brain.

As far as finding the manual have you looked to see if you could find any other from the same company just maybe a different model as they usually use the same sequencing for all of their alarms.  Another way to maybe get the information you are looking for would be to try contacting a local dealer for that alarm if their are any and just asking them to look at a manual since they will most likely have them laying around.

As far as the rain messing with the fob it could have just had water inside causing an issue and once it is dried out it will work normally again.

[mister]

I did a looky myself. All I could find was the dealer willing to sell the INstruction Guide for 4 pounds delivered free in the UK. Found some other mob wanting like $40 for a PDF of a 13 page thing - yeah right. And also found a guy selling his on Ebay. Might be able to ask him if he would either scan the pages and send them to you - or - take a photo of each page and send those to you.

You could also go into a reseller - such as bike shop - and ask them if you could look at it, or take photos of the pages yourself so all they do is get the booklet out the box and let you have it for one minute while you do a Bond James Bond on the document with your camera.

For what it's worth, I've found a few places where people are asking the same thing as you - where can I get instructions for this thing? And no-one has an answer.

Michael