Stock S14 alarm description

[radhaz]

I'm having some starter problems, I bought the car used about a year and was told the alarm was still installed but not functional. I've never seen the led in the steering column activate until today when I was getting a jump. I can't troubleshoot this until the weekend (work schedule is amazingly busy) and I'd like to do as much paper troubleshooting as possible before I can get a multimeter on the ckt. I found a Single Pole Double Throw switch (aka toggle switch) and a momentary pushbutton underneath my dash that don't look anywhere near stock so I'm guessing they're some el cheapo aftermarket kit.

I didn't have time to trace the wires out but if anyone can give me some guidance as to the general operation of alarms functions I would greatly appreciate it. Would one of the switches be a "valet switch" and if so what does a valet switch do? I'm wondering if the toggle switch is a manual starter kill but its in a rather obvious spot for that (I found in 30 seconds of looking).

I was able to push start the car (with help of course) but without further troubleshooting that doesn't help me much to figure out the culprit. If it's a bad starter I can just buy a new one and install it over the weekend, but if it's an alarm issue I will probably have to take it to an installer and get them to install a new alarm/remove the old one.

Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated I went through the www.the12volt.com website and while it gives some generic pinouts but that was about it regarding the alarm