Unlocking Theft: Deterrent Feature of my Car

The battery of my car had to be disconnected to get my timing belt changed. When you loose power to your car battery, the radio will not work, and it will show on the display in lock mode when the ignition is on. To unlock it, I had to press the left or right SEEK arrows, or the left or right TUNE arrows for 0000 to appear on display. I tried to go by the instructions and enter my secret code which I did not know. I had to enter the code before I could get my radio back on.

Activating the Theft-Deterrent Feature

1. To activate the theft feature, I could not allow more than 15 seconds to elapse between any steps entering the code. There are 11 steps.
2. I had to have a four-digit number
3. I had to turn the ignition switch to ACCESSORY or ON
4. The next step was to turn the radio off.
5. Press 1 and 4 buttons together. Hold them down until ---- shows on the display.
6. Press the SEEK right or left arrow, or the TUNE right or left arrow and 0000 appears. 6. Press SEEK left arrow and hold it until the first digit of the code appeared.
7. Press SEEK right arrow and hold it until the second digit of the code appeared.
8. Press TUNE left arrow and hold it until the third digit code appeared.
9. Press TUNE right arrow and hold it until the fourth digit code appeared.
10. Press AM-FM after checking that the code I entered was the one I had written down. Then REP was supposed to have showed on the display to repeat steps 5 through 9.
11. The last step was to press AM-FM again and the display was supposed to have shown SEC.

Really, all I needed to do was to unlock the theft-deterrent feature following steps 6-10. Then the time of day would have appeared on the display. By the time I got to step 10, I had to start over from the very beginning. I didn’t really know my code, but I had guessed it right. Still, something went wrong. Whenever I entered an incorrect code, the display showed ERR. When I gave it one last try, the display showed “Inop”.

I had no idea what it meant, but I figured it meant that I was not going to ever get my code in. I believe the Inop came from trying too many times and mashing too many buttons. So I had to take my car back to the shop to get them to fix it.