I was messing around still trying to figure out why only one of my cooling fans was coming on (I have another post for that),  and I noticed something that had never caught my attention before.

It's this little black button switch thing coming out of one of the wire harnesses down under the dash near where the fuse box is located.  It looks like some kind of a reset button or something.  Does anyone have an idea what this thing is, or what it's for, or what it's supposed to do?

1996 Legacy Outback, 2.2L, manual transmission.

Security system reset button.  Turn on the key and press and hold the button until the system resets if the alarm went off.

If you want to test it.  Unhook the battery.  Wait a few minutes and then hook the battery back up.  The alarm will go off.  Blinking light, horn if it has on....

 

That's interesting.  Thanks very much.  On my car, when I unhook the battery or it goes completely dead I get the flashers going off but not the horn (lucky me).  I don't have a key fob, so whenever that happened I'd have to remember what I did to get the flashers to stop.  Usually I would end up coming here or google.  I eventually learned that if I disconnected the battery, turned the key on, then hooked up the battery that the flashers would stop.  I don't recall ever seeing anyone referring to that little switch before.  Again, thanks.  Learn something new every day.  Hooking up the battery with the key turned on doesn't really sound like something you should be doing.

Should be a yellow tag on a battery cable with instructions.

 

But yes, if the battery is disconnected, the parking lights will flash. Ignition "ON" and press that button for 1 second resets it.

FYI...Go here for reference: http://www.cars101.com/subaru/keyless.html#code alarm

Buy one of the key fobs shown and you 'should' be able to have keyless entry. Likely only find them on Ebait, used.  But Amazon might have 'em, too.

This was a Subaru Dealer-installed option back in the day. You can see in your pics that the 'module', where the harness connects, is held in place by that tie-strap/zip tie.