Remote Start

[Kitteh298]

Who has installed one before? I just bought myself a viper 5204 for christmas that I'll be installing on new years eve. My dad has worked for two car places in the past, so he knows what he is doing.

The car is a 2002 kia optima with a manual transmission. I made a neutral safety switch so I don't have to use reservation mode. My clutch has 2 switches for the safety. I'll wire a dpdt relay to the neutral safety and starter.

I will be soldering the connections of course.

Any tips or tricks? I bought an automatic/self adjusting wire stripper so I can tap into wires easily.

[djbrun]

Are you sure your 5 speed manual tranny has a neutral switch?

You two switches on your clutch should be start interrupt and cruise control de-activation.

If you do not have a neutral safety switch then I would not suggest doing this.

[Kitteh298]

It doesn't, that's why I made one..

You have to use both switches to start the car.

[djbrun]

http://alarmsellout.com/support/diag...02001-2005.pdf

Here is a link for the locks, horn and trunk wires. I am trying to find the starting system diagram to verify the logic of the clutch switches.

[Kitteh298]

Cool, thanks for the link, I found a wiring diagram, but not one with pictures

I tested the clutch switches, and unless it was just a fluke, you need the one switch out and the one switch in for it to start

[djbrun]

Are you saying you have a schematic for the starting system? If not, are you on a kia forum? I am sure one could be aquired from a forum.
If you have one you could send me then I could answer any question you might have.

[Kitteh298]

No I had the same thing you gave me, but without pictures.

Doubt a kia forum would have it, KGIS might.

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[harry697]

All I can say is make sure you know what you're doing. Not that I doubt your abilities, just that I've seen way too many supposed "professionals" ruin people's cars when installing remote starts. We had a Nissan recently that needed a new wire harness because of a shoddy remote start installation. Everything worked fine for a few months, but then trouble lights started coming on, devices started malfunctioning, etc. Ended up being just under $2000 to replace the harness and fix all the aftermath.

Not sure if you've ever heard of Cervini's Auto Design, but a friend of mine works there and they're a well-known Mustang performance company. Anyway, one of their high-end build cars came into my shop a few years ago. Cobra Mustang with full body kit, suspension, super charger, the works. Someone installed a remote start (not Cervini's) and long story short, the car somehow started while the guy was in WaWa (a convenience store on the East Coast if you're not familiar) and drove itself through the front window of the store! That was a little over $5000 in front end repairs.

All I can really say is make sure the kit you use is the best quality you can find and follow the directions very carefully. Good luck!

[Kitteh298]

Yeah. I've heard that a few times - Some screwball installs a starter in a manual trans with no kind of safety..

What I have is a bracket with a reed switch and it detects if it is in neutral, if it is, it grounds the neutral safety on the remote starter

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[harry697]

Yeah. I've heard that a few times - Some screwball installs a starter in a manual trans with no kind of safety..

What I have is a bracket with a reed switch and it detects if it is in neutral, if it is, it grounds the neutral safety on the remote starter

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Yeah, the Mustang was manual trans. The Nissan was auto. They just hacked-up the harness. A lot of these newer cars have a certain resistance for certain wires. SRS systems are especially sensitive to this. I remember a local shop doing a lift kit on a newer Ford pickup. They had to extend some wires to the fuel sending unit due to the body lift. Gas guage wouldn't work afterwards. All the wiring was correct, but something about the resistance in those wires was changed from extending them and caused the guage not to work. Some crazy stuff going on with cars nowadays.


I fixed a car a couple years ago and the lady came back blaming us because she failed inspection. I replaced a rear quarter panel, bumper cover, and some other details on the rear of the car. She failed for "obstruction of OBD2 port". That's where they plug their scanner in to do their testing. She brings it back and I look at the port and started laughing immediately. She didn't appreciate it too much, but that's too bad because it had nothing to do with what I did to her car. Turns out, whoever installed her alarm system, plugged the constant hot wire into a terminal on the OBD port. Some hill billy with a test light and no common sense. Just goes to show how professional some of those "professionals" are. Says even more for the guy at the inspection station. All he had to do (what I would have done) is rip the wire out and plug his equipment in. But instead he found an easy way of getting out of working and in the process making the lady's life miserable.

[djbrun]

I actually have a funny story about this. (Funny because no one was hurt and it wasn't my car.) My friend had an alarm installer put one of these in his 5 speed Mustang. He told me about it after it was installed, and I told him that I didn't think it was a good idea and that I wanted to remove the clutch switch by=pass that they did. He assured me that he always puts his car in neutral.
He called a week and half later very shaken. He parked his car in the driveway to run in and get something, while he was inside he hit the start button on the remote (He was in a hurry.) and then heard a series of loud noises.

The first noise was his Mustang driving through the garage door. (It made it half way through before it stalled.)
The second noise was the top of the garage door falling down.
The third noise which was delayed, was his new tires (to be mounted the next day.) were hit by the door and rolled into his Ducati and knocked it over.

This caused quite a bit of damage, good excuse to get the Mustang painted, I had recently installed a 331 stroker engine in it to go along with teh rest of the mods, and paint was the last thing it needed. (Along with some new front fenders and bumper now.)

Luckily the Ducati just had some minor damage, but the gargae door didn't fair so well. He was renting at the time so the home owner was not impressed.

He said he was afraid to touch anything else at the time. You could tell his heart was racing, he then asked if I could go ahead and take out the remote start, which I gladly did.

The main thing is to hook up your neutral switch circuit in a safe fail mode. Meaning if it has a problem or fails that the car can not start.

BTW, I use to work as a VW/Mazda tech in the late 80s early ninties and VW didn't have clutch switches then. I think they added them in 93'. I always thought that was odd for a manufacturer to do that.

[Kitteh298]

Haha, you have some great stories, where do you work? Auto body shop? Cool thing about my kia is that it has no advanced driver assists(abs, traction control) and no factory security or expensive transponder key.

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[harry697]

BTW, I use to work as a VW/Mazda tech in the late 80s early ninties and VW didn't have clutch switches then. I think they added them in 93'. I always thought that was odd for a manufacturer to do that.

Wow, that doesn't sound very safe! One thing that intrigues me even more is when you look at the older American cars (pre-70's) and there in no hood lock. You just reach under the grille/bumper and pull the lever to open the hood. That's just an example of how things have declined over the years. Now, hood lock releases in the cabin area are a standard and many of them even have pressure switches that will trigger the alarm. Either people were more trust-worthy back then, or maybe more naive. I wasn't around then, so I can't say which it was.

Haha, you have some great stories, where do you work? Auto body shop? Cool thing about my kia is that it has no advanced driver assists(abs, traction control) and no factory security or expensive transponder key.

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Yep, collision repair. You wouldn't believe some of the stuff I see. Especially previous repairs. I've seen bumper covers attached to the fender with deck screws, and then filled-in with body filler and painted. I couldn't figure out why this bumper wouldn't come off of a Honda Accord when I had removed hundreds of them over the years.

I saw a car come back one day with the front bumper dragging the ground. Turns out the tech who replaced the radiator support wasn't very good at welding and the whole assembly broke free form the rails and fell to the ground! Crazy stuff for sure!

Just finished up with a 2012 Dodge Challenger R/T Hemi car. Has roughly 4,000 miles on it and was involved in a minor rear end collision. Actually, the owner backed into something and hit the left rear corner of the car. It was repaired at one of our sister dealerships and was one of the most atrocious repairs I've ever seen. It was initially a $4,000 repair done by the other dealership and by the time all was said and done, I had right around $8,000 worth of parts and labor to fix what the last guy wasn't capable of.

[Kitteh298]

Wow, that actually sounds like a cool job. My car was actually rear ended. Broke the bumper, tail light, and mooshed the trunk in a bit(only seen from inside the trunk) there is a little rust starting on the fender.

But we took the insurance money and paid off the car and ebayed a new tail light, not all bad. Can't hardly tell that the bumper is broken. I want to take it off and throw some fiberglass on it though.

How can I remove the rear bumper cover on my car? Maybe you have a "collision manual" for it?

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[Kitteh298]

I think it may have been just a fluke, I was digging around kiatechinfo.com and the only thing they list for the clutch is when you push it down to the floor, not just touching it, that switch is only listed in the cruise control system.

If that is in fact the case, and the switch is just a grounding switch, I don't even need a relay, all I need to do is wire the starter negative on the remote start to the switch output.

[rjm2519]

I don't think your car has a neutral safety switch, a quick search only found one for the autos. Maybe you can wire a switch into the parking brake as a fail safe, so if the brake isn't engaged it won't start, along with the fail-safe you were going to use.

If I wanted a remote start I would take it to a well known installer that will stand behind their work. I get a little anxious when talk of wire splicing in a car goes on, I have seen too many times what an idiot with an idea can ruin. Luckily both mine and my wife's vehicles have factory remote start available, just plug, program, and play.

[djbrun]

I wouldn't trust any installer to do a good job. You need to do it yourself if you want it done right. Using proper solder equipment along with some heat shrink.

I haven't been able to find a schematic yet, so I am not sure if your switch is used as a dry contact to complete an analog circuit or to ground in a discrete input. I'll keep looking.

[Kitteh298]

All it'd take is using a multimeter to see what it does, but I have not had the time to do so yet.

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[rjm2519]

There are some very large custom shops in this area that have been around for more than 20 years, I would trust them. I am not talking some fly-by-night flea market installer.

[djbrun]

I wasn't talking about some fly by night shop. I had a well known shop do some custom work on my last corvette I owned when I was traveling alot and didn't take the time to do it myself. I removed the head unit to fab a custom case and found electrical tape and twisted connections, you just never know. In this case I am sure that they had their senior guys do the custom amp and woofer enclosure, but had a new guy do the head unit install.
If you do it yourself, you'll save some money, and have the piece of mind of knowing it is done right.

[Double G]

My partner at work took a 911 call from a caller last week who said a Saturn that started itself and rammed into his parked car with his infant inside of it. No one driving yet the car would start, move and ram his car and then shut off only to restart and continue with this process again.
I didn't read the report but before the caller disconnected the owner of the Saturn came out and said he had a car starter.

[djbrun]

That would have to be several issues for that unfortunate incident to take place. Was the baby ok?

[harry697]

How can I remove the rear bumper cover on my car? Maybe you have a "collision manual" for it?

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2002 is going back a long way in my memory bank.

IIRC, on an 02 Optima, you will need to remove the bumper as a complete assembly. There should be a few push retainers in the wheel openings that attach the wheel liners to the cover. Also, a screw on each side of the bumper cover at the wheel opening that attaches the cover to the quarter panels. There may or may not be a couple 10mm bolts on the inside of the quarter panels that go down into the sides of the bumper cover( that seems to change back and forth every few years). Next, remove both tail lights and there should be a few more push retainers. After that, there will be four bolts that hold the bumper reinforcement beam to the unibody. They will either be in the truck floor, under the carpet or they will be underneath the car on the left and right frame rails.

Might sound like a lot, but you can probably have it off the car within a half hour on your first try.

[Kitteh298]

Got my Viper 5204 installed.... kind of.. Maybe someone can help.

The door locks work, trunk needs relay, and the starter doesn't crank(the car will turn on and hit ignition, but wont actually crank)... What can I try?

I can get in and manually start the car, and then hit the remote start and it will keep running...

These are things that I have verified..

-fuses are good
-wait-to-start isn't grounded
-wont start on any tach modes
-I have the second accessory hooked up to the flex relay programmed to acc 2.
-the violet wire goes to the car side - and green to key side

[Kitteh298]

It all works!!!(kinda jerryrigged)

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