By Dick Maury
In reading on the forums about the battery failures in the alarm module, I decided to modify the system. I did read about remote mounting the battery pack and removing the batteries from the curcuit board and decided this was the best route. I had to piece it together as far as the proceedure to accomplish this. I decided to add a bit more with pictures to help anyone else trying this. The car is a 2004 Ferrari spider.
First step is to remove the left and rear panels in the front "trunk". These unscrew with a 4mm allen wrench. There is a dust/moisture shield behind the rear panel. Only a bit of the drivers side needs to be peeled back. If you tear it, you can tape it back when the job is done. Here is a picture of the module:
There are two 10mm nuts on either side, these need to be loosened, not removed as the module will slide off the brackets once loosened. Then pull off the wiring connector once loose. Now with the module on the bench, you will need to take it apart. Carefully using a knife as above, follow the seam around until the knife penetrates. Stop there so as not to damage the internals. Once through all the way around, you can separate it and you will see the curcuit board with batteries as below:
You will need to remove the batteries. I ended up snipping them so as to not heat up the circuit board so much. Once removed, solder in a red and black wire. Other colors can be used but this is pretty much universal in the car world for positive and negative. Note that there were two positive terminals and two negative terminals off of the original batteries. They are jumpered together on the circuit board so either hole will work fine for the new wires. Drill a convenient hole in the side of hte alarm housing to pass the wires through. Once through the hole, use some epoxy and glue the housings back together. Also apply a bit of epoxy to the wires to seal out moisture. Picture below shows the wires coming out of the housing. Use enough wire so that the battery pack can be located conveniently.
The battery pack is 7.2 volts which matches the original batteries. As the batteries are rechargeable, I used a 7.2 battery pack with NiMh to match the originals. This came from the internet and easy to find various brands. EBAY or Amazon or your locak RC hobby shop should have them. If you get the connectors, it will be easy to change out when the need arises. I attached it on top of the brake fluid reservoir with velcro so it would be easy to change out the batteries when the time comes.
