Post Your Ultimate Remote Start Tips, Tricks

They did exactly that to our old house.  Thank god for insurance.

Know what else I use a lot?  The grabber claw thingie with the 4 jaws.  I can feed it and bend it, and grab a cluster of wires and pull it if I need to.  It likes roast beef sammiches.

I know you guys are off on your own tangent now but I managed to think of some tips that may not have been second nature to me a year ago.

I came across a remote starter yesterday where the car had problems. packed airbags, accident car right? well there was a problem with the brakeswitch, no voltage at the switch, but for whatever reason still activated the brake lights. so instead of getting the brake shutdown at the switch I grabbed it from the output for the actual tail lights. so to apply as a general tip, if you're having trouble finding a wire where it should be, always try to think of where that wire is either coming from or going to. parking lights are a common one. you'll find parking lights at a dimmer switch, or at the stalk, or one better at the worst case you'll find the parking light wire at the bulb if you really really have to. so if you're having trouble, go to the source, or go to where that wire will indefinitely end up.

installing a remote starter is also a lot easier than trouble shooting one most of the time. first thing with an inactive starter is to check if it's in valet. if the remote starter turns on but won't start, try remote starting with the key in the ignition. if no luck, check your shut down triggers, like brake or hood pin, or if it's a standard transmission car, clutches are easy to mess up on. recheck your polarity. if still no luck then you check your power inputs. if still good at this point you check the wires in the car. if the car has had a starter installed before, you never know if the put in a starter kill and either left it there or reconnected the starter wire poorly. if you STILL have trouble, you might suspect your brain to be no good. if you have access to another brain you might try swapping out the brain. if that still doesn't work, you without question have a programming issue, or there is an unidentified problem with the car. if it's an old car and one out of four door pins actually work, than that may be your problem. but remember every starter is different. I had one a couple weeks ago that after all these steps, we thought his bad door pins were the problem, but when we called tech support, he told us to program the unit to turn off the starter kill feature, even though we hadn't installed one. no idea how it worked, but it did. learn somethnig new every day.

but as far as troubleshooting a starter goes, that's the way it's done.