850 alarm activates while driving

oubalie · Post by **oubalie** » 31 Aug 2014, 05:50

Hi all members,my name is anthony and i live in capetown South Africa.
Im new to volvo and this forum ,thanks for letting me join and alittle about me
ive always liked the old volvo cars being the 122 amazon as they were called in our country ,but i was a alfa romeo fan at heart.i bought a 1996/1997 volvo 850 r and im thrilled with it .never knew it was such a nice car to drive. i liked them since the old days but never looked into them properly being only alfa at the time. Now my alarm systems is staring to play up ,itgoes off intermittendly while im driving for about 5minutes and then all is well with it ,sometimes for the whole day and maybe upto 3days and then it starts all over again .iv been reading the forum and learnt that it is the 210/211 relay but reading colums they are having problems in starting .mine starts no problems and central locking works aswell .please help if possible
Thanking you
anthony

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 31 Aug 2014, 12:37

Welcome to MVS Anthony.

I am going to move your post to the 850 forum where you will get more response to your question.

...Lee

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 31 Aug 2014, 13:46

Do you have any other strange problems such as the radio cutting out or the lights on the instrument cluster flickering? If so it may simply be a bad electrical portion of the ignition switch - it is a common problem. In Volvo terms it is an relatively inexpensive part and it is very easy to replace it.

The alarm should never be armed when the car is running so if everything else is OK then I would think that the problem is actually in the alarm relay. Given that you would have a European version of the car you may have one of the more elaborate Guard alarm systems and I am not familiar enough with them to be of much help. Most of the 850s here in the USA have the basic alarm system and alarm problems are solved by removing the alarm relay and adding the jumper wire between the socket positions associated with relay pins 50E and 50F on the 210 side of the relay. The alarm relay is buried behind a huge bundle of wires behind the dash but if you could snap a picture of relay 210/211 we can likely figure out which alarm system you have.

...Lee

oubalie · Post by **oubalie** » 01 Sep 2014, 13:21

Hi Lee thanks for the reply but everything works fine in the car just the alarm goes off when you start the car and drive ,after about 5min its disarms its self and all is well. the alarm is the alarm 11 which i think is the up dated version of alarm 1 .I removed the relay 210/211 and crossed the 2 pins to start yesyerday so driving around with out alarm and no central locking. Tell me where is the alarm hooter/siren situated in the engine compartment looking for it and cant see it anywhere
thanks oubalie (means old man in our afrikaans language)
Anthony

Scottyy · Post by **Scottyy** » 17 Sep 2014, 08:56

Welcome!

Post by **Ozark Lee** » 17 Sep 2014, 14:40

The alarm horn is located on the firewall, near the center of the car.

It is circled in this picture.

...Lee

Post by **j-dawg** » 18 Sep 2014, 11:39

do you have the alarm key fob? remove that from your keychain and leave it in the house one day, and see if the problem still occurs. i know some cars will happily fire off the alarm if you hit the panic button even while you're driving.