I'm in the rear of my 2003 camper settled in for the night but want to lock all the doors and rear hatch. I click the central locking button on the key fob and all is good until I get up for a trip to the toilets at 3AM. I unlock a side door with the lock lever and open the door. Suddenly I've woken the entire campsite due alarm going off...and I've done this more than once.

 

Of course what I should have done is use door lock switch in the driver's door but getting to it from the rear of the van is a bit of a struggle. Have I missed a trick? Is there a way to lock all the doors from the rear compartment comfortably without setting the alarm?

 

Thank you.

Edited May 6, 20241 yr by Geralt

I don't know about locking the doors without setting the alarm, but none of the tents on a campsite will be locked so maybe just leaving it unlocked overnight is the simplest solution? Failing that, a short pole to reach to the lock button?

I don't have the same problem.

I don't lock our doors.

 

I do have another problem though.

At 3am all you can see of my black dog is a large number of glistening sharp white teeth !

Fortunately, his bark is worse than his bite.

 

I have yet to receive many complaints regarding how loud I get whilst trying to quieten HIM !

if its a pee you need to get up for, have a plastic 1 pint bottle handy and some hand gel to clean your hands afterwards, then you do not have the worry about waking others

Mine doesn't have an alarm, so just lock with the fob (or reach over to the driver's door panel switch).

 

Appreciate with an alarm it makes things a bit more complicated!

On 5/6/2024 at 4:18 PM, smurf said:

just leaving it unlocked overnight is the simplest solution

Thanks but not sure the solution to a problem is to forget about the problem. My tent was once burgled while I was in it. Difficult to forget about that.

 

Anyway, during this weekend's trip I realised that I could just remove the driver's headrest and leave it in the footwell. Reaching the door lock button then becomes much easier.

On 5/7/2024 at 1:11 AM, Michael Brown said:

if its a pee you need to get up for, have a plastic 1 pint bottle handy

Not sure my wife would go for that!

For ladies there is such a gadget called a Peewee, bit like a funnel  to pee into and then into a lidded pint bottle or similiar. This is to save you having to get up and go outside your vehicle. This is a tempory fix. Just empty contents down a loo in morning and wash bottle  etc out for next time. If you need a dump, you may have a problem

if you lock the car using keyfob then this will set the alarm... but if you lock from inside (drivers inside lock) then it shouldn't. Try it at home.

I have done this with other toyotas so probably the same.

Like Geralt, I once had stuff stolen from a tent while I was sleeping, but that was at a festival and I've not felt the need to lock our Alphard camper overnight at campsites. However, if it's a busy city site or one with high turnover we'll go for a compromise - lock with the key fob, then unlock the n/s sliding door manually, working on the basis that anyone opening the side door in the night would make enough 'sliding' noise to wake us. The good news? This doesn't result in an alarm going off when heading to the loo in the middle of the night, but then I've never heard our alarm so I can't be sure that we have one....