this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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What is this thing?

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I bought a '21 Corolla SE from Carvana through a "partner". The partner may have been Hertz since the license plate holder that came with the car says Hertz on it. Carfax says this car was for personal use, so the details are a bit hazy to me.

I intend to install a dash cam and was looking for the interior fuse box and found this thing. As in the title, the red light was blinking until I pressed the button next to it.

The car had some trouble starting, and I suspect a weak battery. If Hertz had this car, could this be part of a tracking system? It would explain battery drain, but I'm not sure.

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[–] malloc@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Just looks like a switch to me. I don’t know what it’s switching but could follow the wires and see where it leads. If not comfortable with car electronics, just take it to a mechanic and they should be able to reverse engineer it and remove it if unnecessary.

Like another poster said it’s definitely not factory. You can tell just by how janky it looks and how it’s screwed into the fabric and plastic molding.

Could be for some accessory that was removed prior to selling to Hertz and they forgot about it. But could also be for some tracker.