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I bought a 2005 Nissan Altima a few months ago, and although I am happy with it overall, there are some things that really irk me. I finally figured out how to avoid one of them, after all this time.
I like it just fine when I lock my van (2001 Toyota Sienna) with the remote. It gives a gentle 'beep' to let me know that it heard me and locked itself. The Nissan, though, lets out a loud 'HONK' of the horn, which annoys me every single time I lock it (especially late at night or early in the morning).
But, I always lock my vehicles from the outside, with the remote. It's how I always avoid locking my keys in my car. Can't lock them in the car if they're in my hand, outside of the car, when I lock it.
Well, yesterday I accidentally found a workaround for the 'HONK'. All I have to do his push the lock button on the remote while the door is still open. No beep, no honk. Just the quiet click of doors locking. As long as I always still lock it from the outside, with the remote, just before closing the door, I will hopefully still avoid locking my keys in the car.
I hope this proves useful to someone else. I wish I'd known sooner. I'll post some other of my pet peeves about my Nissan Altima soon, in the hopes that someone might have a solution/workaround, or at least to vent/get it out of my system.
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2 comments:
Try pressing and holding the Lock and Unlock buttons on the remote for a few seconds. The parking lights should flash 3 times to signal success. I just tried this on a 2006 Sentra.
Yep, I actually figured this out about a month ago. Thanks for posting! A little more detail:
- Holding the Unlock button for a few seconds actually rolls down my front windows
- Holding the Lock button for a few seconds toggles the honk-on-lock "feature".
I've had that damn honking disabled for about a month, and I actually sort of miss it!
Without the honking, the only indication you get that the doors have been locked is a very subtle quick flashing of a couple of the lights in the headlight assembly (maybe the daytime running lights?).
Unlocking, if I remember correctly, provides an equally subtle cue (I don't remember if it behaved differently when honking was enabled. I know it didn't honk-on-unlock, but I felt like it was less subtle anyways).
What makes this subtlety even worse is that my Nissan, unlike every other car I've ever dealt with, does not make a loud ka-chunk sound whenever you push the lock or unlock buttons. If the doors are already locked, and you push the Lock button, it silently does nothing. If they are not already locked, and you push the Lock button, it quietly locks them. The same applies for unlocking.
My point (as already stated earlier) is that without the honk-on-lock feature, there is not much of a cue that anything has happened when you push a button the key fob. At least when I was locking the car while the door was still open (as described in the original blog post), I was more attuned to what was going on, because I was holding onto the door.
I still prefer my van's reasonably quiet (but loud enough) "beep beep" [plus flash headlights and taillights] when I unlock it and "beep" [plus flash headlights and taillights] when I lock it, plus audible ka-chunk sounds with both operations.
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