My girlfriend's W-reg Renualt Clio has started to go mad. When you stop and turn the ignition off the central locking 'clonks' and the key-fob won't lock the car. Similarly if you have locked the car it randomly opens itself. Sometimes it sits there clonking away locking and unlocking the doors.

The red alarm flasher in the centre of the instrument panel also stays illuminated instead of flashing etc.

It can usually be temporary 'cured' by turning off the ignition, restarting the engine and then switching off, getting out the car quick and pressing the key fob to lock it.

It does it with either of her two ignition/key fobs.

Anyway anyone any pointers? Perhaps the battery volts are low is something that's occurred to me?

Ta for any help

I have been told by a local auto electrician that the wrong spark plugs can play havoc with the body computer, resulting eventually for the need to replace it a cost of £100s, make sure that the correct Renault ones are fitted.

my old megane had a habbit of doing simiilar sometimes......it was a similar age ('99 on a V) i was never able to get it to do it at a stealer i just put it down to dodgy french electrics the car also had an intermittent problem with the front indicator connections.....

Not a Renault but an equally odd French car, my Peugeot 306 CDL kept unlocking itself, turns out one of the lock buttons was rubbing on the door card and was quite stiff. This resistance meant the door lock thought something was jamming it and it unlocked itself.

Thanks for answers so far, spark plugs, amazing! It's always been serviced at a Renault dealer, in fact was just done so about 8 weeks ago. So hope not that.

French electrics, hmm

Like the idea of the door lock rubbing.

Aren't garages clever placesat hiding gremlins.

Could be a bit of fun this weekend seeing if I can find anything obvious like the battery being duff. Anything else spring to mind to check? Ta.