Hello everyone,
I'm having some trouble with my car and the co.s that installed my
viper remote starter and just need a reality check about what is going
on. I don't know too much about cars, and don't have all the specs in
front of me, but I can get them if you need it. I'd really appreciate
it if someone could help me out.
I had a viper remote starter installed on my 98 vw cabrio about 3 years
ago. Since then, I have gone through 4 car starters (not the remote,
the actual unit starting the car) and my cruise control stopped
working. This last time I had my car towed to the vw dealer (not
cheap!!!) and they diagnosed the problems as being 'very possibly'
related to the remote starter. They found a .06v constant drain on the
solenoid at all times and hypothesized that because of this, over the
course of 9 months my starter would regularly burn out. They found
something with the cruise control module with a reversed ground wire,
or something...
I took the car to Best Buy, where I had it installed, and they found a
.3v drain on the solenoid. I also have a starter kill switch that was
factory installed (or by the company that I leased the car from, not
vw, but it worked fine and never gave me trouble until I had the remote
installed) and Best Buy is blaming the relay unit connected to the kill
switch for causing the problems. They found a .3v drain with this
relay connected, and when removed, the drain went away. However, I
have no idea if they installed this unit, or it was part of the kill
switch. Initially, it took Best Buy 3 tries to install the starter
'properly' and each time had problems getting around the locks and
factory alarm (all which have their own relays, i think). I also read
that having two relays connected together (like the relay from the kill
to the relay in the remote start) may need either a diode or some other
configuration to work properly... Also, Best Buy said they would
remove the relay unit from my car until they could further detect what
was wrong, and (I think obviously now) the car would not start... so it
leads me to believe that this rep (I think the manager of the install
bay) has no clue about how to connect these devices together...
In either case, I'm really at a loss and could use some help.
I hope to hear from someone and appreciate any advice you can give to
me,
Thanks,
Jon